Exhibition of Urban Portraits unveiled at KWMC
Exhibition Dates: Friday 23rd April – Friday 21st May Images of Bristol people will feature in a new exhibition from two talented photographers, running for a month at Knowle West Media Centre. Knowle West Media Centre, Leinster Avenue, Bristol, BS4 1NL
On Friday 23rd April Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) will unveil a new exhibition exploring how individual and group identities are created by, and represented through, the medium of photography, and featuring portraits of people from South Bristol. Urban Portraits is a joint exhibition of work by photographers Andrew Jackson and Gina Lundy and will run until Friday 21st May. It is free to attend and will be open Monday-Friday. Andrew Jackson will display a series of classical and ‘empathetic’ portraits of women from Knowle West. Interested in the way identity is constructed and expressed, Andrew explores how gender and class identities are intertwined, where perceptions of working class identity often contain entrenched stereotypes of femininity and expectations for women. In photographing local women, Andrew seeks to visually depict “the burden of the negative identities that others have chosen to impose upon them”. The images are accompanied by text, which provides a context or ‘environment’ in which the images can be interpreted and reflects Andrew’s interest in the way people read, connect with or dislocate themselves from their own environments. Andrew has been working in residence at KWMC. He said: “My original intentions for this residency were to focus on the questions: ‘to what degree do we define the spaces around us’ and ‘to what degree do they act to define us in the eyes of others’; whilst creating an atmosphere where gender identity within Knowle West could be reflected and discussed.” Gina Lundy is a freelance photographer and project facilitator for Nlarge, KWMC’s group of young photographers. She will show a series of photographs from ‘Academy’, a recent piece of work documenting the transformation of Withywood Community School into Merchants’ Academy in 2008. The ‘Academy’ project subtly records how the identities of the school and its students shifted as they moved from their old building into a new academic environment. Gina’s photographs visualize transitions: physical alterations in the school building, personal changes implied by the imminent puberty of the portraits’ subjects, and psychological changes, suggested by the reshaping of a shared school identity. Gina said: “My photographic practice is driven by a desire to engage with people and the issues that have a real effect on their everyday lives. The surfaces of things, of people and of places, attract and engage my attention: what a place can represent, its past and present incarnations, and how the individual locates himself within that space.” Gina aspires to create work that “responds to the history of a community or place and locates individuals within it, noting the subtle repetitions in aspiration in relation to current patterns of urban regeneration.” Urban Portraits is part of the KWMC Arts Programme, which is funded by Arts Council South West and Bristol City Council Arts Development. For more information please contact Rachel Clarke, KWMC Communications & Marketing Coordinator: rachel.clarke@kwmc.org.uk 0117 9030444 / www.kwmc.org.uk / www.twitter.com/knowlewestmedia
