Electric Lane’s Photofusion has a new annual exhibition for your perusal. Photofusion Select 2013 is the resource centre and gallery’s selection of four members from their salon held at the end of 2012.
Chris Berry went along to the private view to have a look around.
Upon entry, your eye first wanders over Tim Mitchell’s A Fish Out of Water series. Little do we know, ships “require huge amounts of energy and force to be dismantled at the end of their working lives”, Mitchell explains. Through his work, he shows us the ins and outs of these huge vessels at varying stages of being broken down. But aside from a haunting quality of the work, he stresses the considerable caution required in the dismantling process. Taken as a series, they even highlight how beautiful the colour of rust can be when captured by a sharp eye.
Carlotta Cardana’s Mod Couples are so very British that the portrait photographer – originally from Italy – couldn’t resist documenting these fascinating characters. As the UK “is the home of many subcultures”, she’s especially interested – as a relative outsider – in “what makes them British at all”. Interestingly, she admits that she’s less interested in how people look, but more in how secure they may or may not be in the identity they’ve adopted, and her work offers plenty of glimpses into this probing angle.
Dafna Talmor’s Constructed Landscapes series is drawn from photography of many different locations, including Israel, Venezuela and the UK. Currently working out of her shared studio in Hackney, her complex compositions invite the viewer closer, to really make sense of what they’re seeing. These composite images feel more as though they’ve been deconstructed in some way, and yet this was the necessary path for Talmor to ‘finish’ them off. This paradoxical idea is something Talmor admits she enjoyed playing around with.
Ariadne Radi Cor has been skilfully capturing how something as commonly experienced as short sightedness can profoundly alter one’s perspective of the world around them. By shooting through light-refracting surfaces, such as windowpanes, she captures scenes of apparently familiar objects, but nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems, particularly in London Sea Floor. 13 x 13 is also on show, and both of these pieces are extremely effective in capturing this sense of a blurred reality before one’s eyes.
All artists involved were quick to point out that the £500 bursary granted to each of them by Photofusion was instrumental in enabling them to realise their respective projects. Moreover, such a grant is the kind of help – alongside Photofusion’s considerable support and guidance, as well as workshops – that they hope to continue offering to members in future.
The exhibition runs until 31 May 2013 at Photofusion, 17a Electric Lane, London SW9 8LA.
