Year: 2024

At the edge of the everyday world celebrates over 20 years of work by internationally acclaimed Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. She is best known for finding beauty in the everyday, her work characterised by a poetic or dreamlike quality that imbues mundane scenes and objects with a sense of wonder and transcendence.

Drawing upon work made over two decades, the exhibition reflects upon the fragile beauty of the world we collectively inhabit. From Hokkaido’s snowy landscapes to home life during the Covid pandemic, Kawauchi captures the connections and continuity of life on this planet we call home. 

Works presented will include: Illuminance, Ametsuchi and M/E. The title is taken from an essay written by Masatake Shinohara for Aperture in 2021.

About Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi was born in 1972 in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. In 2001, she simultaneously published three books – Utatane, Hanabi and Hanako – leading to critical acclaim. She has subsequently published multiple books, including: Aila (2005), the eyes, the ears and Cui Cui (all 2005), Illuminance (2011), Ametsuchi (2013), The River Embraced Me (2016) and M/E On this sphere Endlessly interlinking (2022). 

Kawauchi has held multiple solo exhibitions, including:  Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Paris, 2005), The Photographers’ Gallery (London, 2006), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2012), Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto (2016) and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2022). 

She has received multiple awards, including: the Kumara Ihei Photography Award (2002), the Infinity Award from the International Centre of Photography New York (2009), and the Sony Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award (2023). 

More information: https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/rinkokawauchi/

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The archiving impulse is one that attempts to trace, document, and make sense of the world. In response to the photographic archives of Hong Kong held by the University of Bristol and the University of Hong Kong, artists Billy H.C. Kwok, Jay Lau, and Lau Wai have developed new projects that interpret the archival stories of their home city, while revealing the gaps that exist. The works created explore how Hong Kong has always been a place of duality: both real and imagined, public and private, fact and fiction. This exhibition is produced by WMA, in collaboration with the Royal Photographic Society and the Hong Kong History Centre at the University of Bristol. 

Billy H.C. Kwok transforms basic visual art elements into a language for AI bots, using colour, composition, and perspective in photography as commands. Images generated by AI expand the photo archive of Tiger Balm Garden, a garden of great social and historical significance built in colonial Hong Kong during the 1930s. In this newly commissioned work, new characters and scenarios are introduced, at times animated, uncovering facts and establishing connections beyond our knowledge and imagination. Kwok’s back-and-forth communication with AI also points to the tug of war between the artist’s vision and AI’s self-taught abilities, the individual and the public attribution to big data, as well as the deviation from truth and illusion.

Lau Wai will present The Memories of Tomorrow (2018) which examines Hollywood’s often orientalist depiction of Hong Kong, from the 1950s to the present day. The work combines film stills alongside travel postcards, historical photographs and computer generated imagery, to reveal the tensions of a city held between both fiction and reality. 

Jay Lau grew up surrounded by memories, photographs and stories of old Hong Kong all of which occurred before he was born. Here, Lau has created woodblocks from overlooked, everyday images within the archives, such as building and construction work, and crowds of everyday citizens, and produced printed fabrics. He shows Hong Kong and its community always in flux, reflecting his own sense of detachment from its monumental histories, returning the digitally stored archival images to the physical realm.

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On 15th August 2021, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, precisely 20 years after their expulsion in 2001. While their return was widely expected, the pace at which it occurred caught many off guard with the Taliban entering Kabul before U.S. and NATO forces had fully withdrawn. A chaotic evacuation occurred; embassies scrambled to extract their staff while Afghan citizens desperately attempted to gain access to the limited airlifts taking place. The scenes at Kabul airport contained echoes of history, the 1975 fall of Saigon ringing in the ears of many.

Following these events, Hashem Shakeri travelled to Afghanistan, arriving after the international news media had largely moved on to other stories. His images capture daily life as the country readjusts to life under the Taliban. An atmosphere of both uncertainty and ambiguity can be felt; an end to 20 years of conflict yet the return of restrictions and the ongoing threat of violence. His images avoid the monumental, instead focusing on how communities survive in the wake of global history.

About Hashem Shakeri

Hashem Shakeri is an artist, photographer and filmmaker based in Tehran. He creates slow documentary projects that study the aftermath of global histories and ideologies. His work has been published by The Sunday Time, The New York Times, The New Yorker and the British Journal of Photography, amongst others. He is the recipient of multiple awards including: the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (shortlist, 2020), Reportage Grant from Getty Images (2019), POYi’s World Understanding Award (2017), the Lucas Dolega Award (2016) and the Ian Parry Scholarship (Commended, 2015). His work has been presented in group exhibitions including: Paris Photo (2018) and Recontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2017). This exhibition will be his first solo show in the UK.

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Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah will be in residence in Bristol’s Georgian House Museum, creating a new body of work in relation to the building’s colonial history. Built in the late 18th century, Georgian House is best known as the home of John Pinney (1740 – 1818), a wealthy sugar merchant and slave holder; yet was also home to Pero Jones (1753-1793) and Fanny Coker (1767-1820), both of whom were born into slavery and brought to Bristol by the Pinney family. Adu-Sanyah’s commission will respond to these histories. 

About Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah

Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah is a German-Ghanaian artist and photographer based in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work centres upon the colour darkroom, where she uses the materials of photography – paper, light and time – to investigate familial bonds, personal loss, identity and structures of institutional power. The work created emphasises the process of its making; particularly the journey from initial ideas and research research to the creation of a photographic object that is imbued with feeling and emotion.

She has held exhibitions across Europe, including: Centre Photographie Genéve (CH), Photoforum Pasquart (CH), Saarland Museum (DE) & Foam Museum (NL). Her work is held in the permanent collections of both the city and canton of Zurich, the Swiss Photography Foundation (Fotostiftung Schweiz), Fotomuseum Winterthur and the city of Saarbrücken. In 2024, she was the recipient of the Swiss Art Award. She is the author of one monograph, Rough Tide (edition fink, 2024).

The Georgian House Museum is a historic building and does not meet modern accessibility standards.

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In 2011, artist Nigel Poor started volunteering at San Quentin State Prison teaching a history of photography class through the Prison University Project. This led to a long-term collaboration, working with a group of men to explore and respond to San Quentin’s prison archive. Through her images and accompanying stories, viewers are led on a journey that unpacks both the long history of San Quentin Prison, as well as the challenges of representation in relation to incarcerated communities. 

Alongside this exhibition, Bristol Photo Festival has been developing a long-term collaborative project in prisons across the region. Some of the outcomes of this project will be on display as part of the exhibition. 

About Nigel Poor 

Nigel Poor is an artist living and working in the Bay Area, California. For many years her work has explored the various ways people make a mark and leave behind evidence of their existence. Her work has been shown at many institutions including, The San Jose Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, Friends of Photography, SF Camerawork, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Haines Gallery in San Francisco. Since 2011 she has been working on creative projects with incarcerated collaborators at San Quentin Prison, including the internationally-acclaimed podcast Ear Hustle (now downloaded over 75 million times). Poor is also a Professor of Photography at California State University.

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