exhibition

Subject Matters

Artists Sarah Chamberlain, Joana Sandrin Gauer, Dan Green, Charlotte Knee, Jane Ross, Amelia Shepherd

18.Nov.08 - 30.Nov.08
Fri 12-8, Sat-Sun 12-6

Private View, 18.Nov.08, 6:30-9:30

Candid Arts Trust
3 Torrens St Angel
London EC1V 1NQ
020 7837 4237
info@candidarts.com
www.subjectmatters.org.uk
Tube Angel, Islington

In conjunction with the widely celebrated annual East London photographic festival Photomonth and Candid Arts Centre, So Far, a group of photographic artists present the forthcoming exhibition Subject Matters. Six photographers take seemingly overlooked subjects from their everyday lives and transform their significance through various approaches to photographic documentation. Each artist’s work explores the relativity of notions surrounding significance and insignificance, of subject and object. It is here that something deemed insignificant can come to exert significance.

Their documentations mostly annotate bits of the world that generally pass us by.
Dan Green’s portraits of unassuming shopkeepers reassert our existence within the globalised world of the commodity and document the professions of disappearing businesses.

An asylum seeker’s story- all too frequently misrepresented in the media- is laid before us and his story becomes a touching collaborative journey for photographer Amelia Shepherd.

Charlotte Knee explores the relationship between memory and object through documenting the objects of an Alzheimer sufferer where these objects find a new importance.

Paying homage to the everyday, Joana Gauer’s documentations of routines, such as the act of making tea, emphasise how small events and family rituals build upon one another and form who we are.

Sarah Chamberlain and Jane Ross consider the relative significance of time to the photographic image. Chamberlain’s Lifeguards series are ironically portrayed as ‘guardians of life’ and reflect on a deeper internal psychological state whilst Ross’ heath land, ravaged by fire, is subtly captured as a mere moment in the long history of its life.

In essence, these works subtly negotiate traditional forms of photographic representation to enlighten their audiences and it is these types of interventions – the very act of documenting – that turn a subject matter into subjects that matter. Subject Matters belongs to a historic trajectory of photographic responses to the document and poignantly reminds us that within photography there are many ways of seeing. We still have so much left to see.

Notes to editors:
The exhibition takes place from November 18th – 30th
Candid Arts Gallery, Islington
See www.subjectmatters.org.uk for more details
For interviews, images and media enquiries contact Amelia: 07800 527 989
sarah chamberlain joana gauer dan green charlotte knee jane ross amelia shepherd
Press release: 08 September 2008