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Fig: Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg

Fig: Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg
Fig: Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg
This Photoworks exhibition, produced in association with the John Hansard Gallery, features over eighty still lives, portraits and landscapes by photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Drawing together newly commissioned work made around the south coast of England and internationally, Fig. traces links between photography, imperialism and the colonial impulse to acquire, map and collect. The exhibition’s diverse imagery harks back to an era of Victorian collecting, which resulted in strange accumulations of objects being deposited in local museums throughout the UK. Here, with pictures framed in acrylic boxes that suggest the scientific preservation and display of museum objects, the exhibition has become the photographers’ own questioning take on the ‘cabinet of curiosities’. As Broomberg and Chanarin have observed:
‘the history of photography is intimately bound up with the idea of colonial power. Documentary photographers today have a worrying amount in common with the collector/adventurers of past eras. As unreliable witnesses, we have gathered together ‘evidence’ of our experiences and present our findings in this exhibition; a muddle of fact and fantasy.’ The free booklet available in the gallery, to be read in connection with the photographs, provides titles and texts that draw together this disparate selection of work into the artists’ own interconnecting narrative. Figure numbers beneath each image should be cross-referenced with the corresponding numbers in the booklet. The project will be published as a bookwork by Photoworks and Steidl in Autumn 2007.

Foster, Stephen
371e9f3d-15f4-44b6-b6c0-75680105d41e
Chandler, David
4fdc7056-cb70-4f41-995b-359aa4b39488
Foster, Stephen
371e9f3d-15f4-44b6-b6c0-75680105d41e
Chandler, David
4fdc7056-cb70-4f41-995b-359aa4b39488

Foster, Stephen and Chandler, David (2007) Fig: Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg.

Record type: Art Design Item

Abstract

This Photoworks exhibition, produced in association with the John Hansard Gallery, features over eighty still lives, portraits and landscapes by photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Drawing together newly commissioned work made around the south coast of England and internationally, Fig. traces links between photography, imperialism and the colonial impulse to acquire, map and collect. The exhibition’s diverse imagery harks back to an era of Victorian collecting, which resulted in strange accumulations of objects being deposited in local museums throughout the UK. Here, with pictures framed in acrylic boxes that suggest the scientific preservation and display of museum objects, the exhibition has become the photographers’ own questioning take on the ‘cabinet of curiosities’. As Broomberg and Chanarin have observed:
‘the history of photography is intimately bound up with the idea of colonial power. Documentary photographers today have a worrying amount in common with the collector/adventurers of past eras. As unreliable witnesses, we have gathered together ‘evidence’ of our experiences and present our findings in this exhibition; a muddle of fact and fantasy.’ The free booklet available in the gallery, to be read in connection with the photographs, provides titles and texts that draw together this disparate selection of work into the artists’ own interconnecting narrative. Figure numbers beneath each image should be cross-referenced with the corresponding numbers in the booklet. The project will be published as a bookwork by Photoworks and Steidl in Autumn 2007.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 2007
Additional Information: Collaboration with Photoworks / commissioned exhibition funded by Esme Fairbairn foundation
Organisations: Winchester School of Art, Professional Services

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 208635
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/208635
PURE UUID: 4edc13db-0aa1-43f2-8b25-5e5c51e6140c

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 26 Jan 2012 11:54
Last modified: 10 Dec 2021 20:01

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Contributors

Curator of an exhibition: Stephen Foster
Curator of an exhibition: David Chandler

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