Date: 11 May - 6 June 2015
Place: Kings Theatre, Portsmouth, UK Albert Road, Southsea, Portsmouth PO5 2QJ |
Robbie SpotswoodArtist Statement
In my series of photographic prints I take a cubist approach in depicting the brutalist architecture of Portsmouth. I chose to photograph these buildings because they have a very familiar feel to them. These buildings and structures are the same in London as they are here in Portsmouth. I find that these buildings sum up my experience of growing up in a densely populated city perfectly. I wanted to represent the life and chaos, the movement and disorientation of the 'city'. By using double exposures I managed to create an unpredictable effect. My main focus was on symmetry and abstraction. Later, inspired by my darkroom prints, I digitally manipulated my prints to expand on the idea of the ever changing and developing city. My prints got dirtier, darker and repetitious. I found the digital process oddly cathartic. Finally in an experimental collaboration with my close friend Maliha Nazerali we decided to deface my left over prints. This lead to a series of playful and sometimes dark surreal-expressionist pieces that mix paint and photography, transforming the original photo and giving it a new story to follow. |
Vera Hadzhiyska"Inner Worlds"
In my project "Inner Worlds" I am exploring the notion of people’s inner worlds. I am basing my understanding of inner and outer world on John Kehoe’s book "Mind Power into the 21st Century", where he states that we “are living simultaneously in two worlds, two realities: the inner reality of your thoughts, emotions and attitudes, and the outer reality of people, places, things and events." I am representing those two worlds by dividing my images into projected emotions and hidden (inner) emotions, achieving this via layering portraits and paintings in Photoshop. The portraits represent the person’s outer world – their appearance and how they want to be seen by others. The paintings, with a vivid burst of colours, patterns and shapes, represent their inner worlds – their unshared thoughts, emotions, beliefs and sides to their personality they keep to themselves. Letting the people chose the painting which I combine with their portrait to create the collages personalises the meaning of the final prints. Similarly to Rorschach Inkblots, the painting they select, through the colour and shapes speaks about their personality. "Reflection"
"Reflection" explores the notions of home and identity through physical and psychological reflection. In this project I decided to photograph places and objects in Portsmouth, England - the city I currently live and study in, that remind me of my home (Plovdiv, Bulgaria), that make me feel at ease or evoke positive emotions and memories in me. Instead of photographing them straight on, I used my small hand-held mirror, a gift from a close relative, in order to capture only parts of the places reflected in its surface in an abstract fashion. I titled the project "Reflection" because the word is indicative of both physical reflection (through the mirror) and psychological one (through contemplation). It explores the idea that regardless of where we are, we will always find something familiar in the new places we reside in, which we can identify with. Those things will remind us of home because home is not necessarily a place. It can also be a state of mind. |
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