Strange Places: Sub/Urban Photography as Alternative Urbanism, Stanley Picker Gallery, UK, 30 September - 21 November 2009

2009-07-14

This show brings together eleven international contemporary artists who propose an alternative mapping of the globalized urban condition and its margins. Whether gazing at ambiguous thresholds on the edges of the urban, or tracing liminal spaces in the city, these photographs explore themes of place, identity, boundaries and the uneasy encounter between land and built environment. Shared across the exhibited work is the near absence of people, as the images do not capture action, but meditate on the spaces where human life unfolds. What emerges from this observation of traces and aftermath is a pervasive poetic quality hinting at the potential beauty of the most unlikely places.

The ideas behind the Strange Places are drawn from both photographic discourses and emerging ideas of alternative urbanism. The broader aim of the show is to argue the increasing relevance of artistic practices such as photography for the exploration and interpretation of complex cultural phenomena like the city and its expansion. Whilst the Bechers and the Dusseldorf School can be seen as an origin for the type of photography gathered in the exhibition, its references are much broader. In the past two decades a growing body of photographic land and cityscapes has challenged established definitions and categories, in an attempt to represent the richness, ambiguity and often conflict of our late modern notion of place.

The artists represented in this show have been increasingly attracted to the blurred boundaries and surprising intersections of culture and nature, fact and fiction, private and public, to produce work that reveals complex modes of inhabitation, appropriation, alienation and destruction. Simultaneously, in the realm of cultural and urban theory, scholars like Andre Corboz, Sebastien Marot and Richard Sennett have consistently argued for a broadening of our intellectual stance and range of media for engaging with the modern urban phenomenon.

The exhibition space will be designed by drdh architects, creating an environment that will provide a further layer to the reading of the exhibition’s key themes.

The artists selected for the exhibition are: Hannah Collins (b. 1956, UK), Ori Gersht (b. 1967, Israel/UK), Naoya Hatakeyama (b. 1958, Japan), Stefi Klenz (b. 1979, Germany/UK), Sze Tsung Leong (b.1970 Mexico/USA), Rut Blees Luxemburg (b. 1967, Germany/UK), Simone Nieweg (b. 1962, Germany), Xavier Ribas (b. 1960, Spain), Thomas Weinberger (b. 1964, Germany), Rachel Wilberforce (b. 1975, UK), Bitter/Weber (b. 1960/1957 Austria)

Alexandra Stara
Stanley Picker Gallery