Author: BPFTest_Admin

October 2021 (TBC)
The Georgian House Museum, Bristol
7 Great George St, Bristol BS1 5RR, United Kingdom

‘Dipina tsa Kganya (2021) features two performances informed by a notion of healing, enacted through acts of naming and cleansing.

The word dipina means ‘songs’ in my mother language of seSotho. The song referred to is that of my family clan names, traditionally passed down through oral tradition. Additionally, the Sotho word for ‘light’: kganya – is in the etymology of my last name: Kganye.

A central visual component is the lighthouse featured in the middle channel of the video work. A light beam, in perpetual motion, casts light onto the surrounding ocean scene and in turn creates shadows in the two peripheral channels of the work. In the first or left video channel, a lighthouse keeper appears as a custodian of this light, tending to it by continually cleaning the bulb – a light source that symbolically guides those lost at sea. The song featured in the work (composed by musician Thandi Ntuli) plays from a large, custom-built Polyphon music box, which is hand cranked in the third or right video channel.

These performative gestures are in conversation with the southern African practice of the ‘praise-singing’ of clan names as a way of passing down the origins of the family story as an act of resistance to historical erasure, to ensure its unwritten continuity.

Lebohang Kganye was born in 1990 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she currently lives and works. Kganye is currently doing her Masters in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. Notable awards include the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, the Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize (2020) and Camera Austria Award (2019).

Kganye is currently participating in major museum group exhibitions in 2021 including: ‘Family Affairs. Family in Current Photography’ at the House of Photography in Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and ‘The Power of My Hands’ at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. She has exhibited her work extensively within curated group exhibitions and biennales including: ‘Afterglow’ Yokohama Triennale (2020); ‘Africa State of Mind’, a travelling exhibition presented at the Royal West of England Academy (2019 – 2020), the Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco (2019) and the Impressions Gallery, Bradford (2018); ‘Recent Histories’, a touring exhibition of the Arthur Walther Collection at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2018–2019) and ‘Give Me Yesterday’ Fondazione Prada, Milan (2016)South African artist Lebohang Kganye, has collaborated with The Georgian House Museum to create an installation as part of Bristol Photo Festival. The black and white three-channel video installation offers a response to the violence of historical erasure of names and oral traditions. The house was once home to a sugar trader and his enslaved staff. Dipina tsa Kganya: Leave the light when you leave for good invites us to reflect on the legacy of colonialism as a shared history.

The Georgian House Museum 

The installation will be on display in the Drawing Room of The Georgian House Museum. Following the fashions of the time, the Drawing Room was on the first floor, at the front of the house, with three large floor to ceiling windows.  As the grandest room in the house, it would have been set with the family’s best pieces of furniture and paintings, possibly including a carpet.  Here, evening guests might have been entertained by musical performances or amused at card parties, while day time visitors would have taken tea with the ladies of the family. 

The house was built, between 1788 – 91 at number 7 Great George Street as the city home of John Pinney, a wealthy sugar planter and slave owner, and his family. Pinney inherited sugar plantations on the Caribbean island of Nevis, and the family’s wealth was founded on sugar grown and harvested by an enslaved workforce.  Now the Georgian House museum, the house is presented as it might have looked at that time, with rooms revealing life above and below stairs. 

16 September – 19 December 2021
Martin Parr Foundation
Paintworks, 316, Arno’s Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR, United Kingdom
Thu- Sun 10.30 – 17.30

I AM NOT INVisible is a visual account of homelessness in America. Over a period of 4-years Danish photographer, Thilde Jensen, set out across the US to create a document of this community excluded from mainstream society. The exhibition will be Jensen’s first in the UK and also the first time that the majority of the works from this project have been exhibited.

Jensen began the work that led to this project when in 2014, she met Reine and Lost, two homeless men in Syracuse, New York. Reine and Lost lived under a highway, and had survived three Upstate New York winters, huddled together on a small concrete ledge. Their openness in sharing their lives with Jensen drew her into a wider project photographing in Gallup, New Mexico, Las Vegas, and New Orleans as well as Syracuse. The resulting photographs represent the social cost of a system valuing profit over human welfare — homelessness representing a tangible consequence of an ever increasing chasm between rich and poor.

Jensen, herself had spent two years living out of a tent in the woods after becoming sick with Environmental Illness. She had been living well and working hard but had not made enough money to cover health insurance and she had no American safety net to catch her. These years of illness and isolation became the subject of her first book, The Canaries.

‘Though I had lived outside myself, the people I encountered in the street were there for reasons other than mine. I wanted the pictures to authentically show the often brutal reality of life in the streets of America. This meant learning a new way of making unposed photographs with my old medium format film camera, simply following and mirroring the people and their unfolding experiences. I spent many hours over weeks and months, gaining the trust of the homeless and understanding their struggles. I listened and I let the pictures come naturally. I tried to work from a place of extreme empathy instead of getting in the way of the people I was with.

´Most of the homeless people I met had life stories so full of trauma and neglect that I was surprised they had made it this far. An unkind world and a system not designed to help them succeed had deeply scarred many of them. They feel cast out, unwanted, invisible, forgotten. They endure constant harassment from cops, business owners, kids or drunks throwing rocks or lighting them on fire as they slept. Unsheltered, vulnerable to sexual assault and violence. Sleepless nights with drugs and alcohol to dull the pain. Slowly, your reality stops making sense or becomes too painful to inhabit, and the thin veil that separates you from madness starts to slip.’

Thilde Jensen was born in Denmark and moved to New York City in 1997. Six years later her life and career as a documentary and editorial photographer was cut short by a sudden development of severe Environmental Illness. The Canaries, her series about Environmental Illness, has been published in The New York Times, FT Magazine, The Observer, Esquire Russia, Wired.com rawfile, Vision Magazine China, Business Insider and Slate.com. The book of the series of work from this exhibition, The Unwanted was published in 2019. Jensen is a NYFA Fellowship and Light Work Grant recipient. In 2017 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete photographing for The Unwanted project. Her work has been exhibited in galleries internationally.

25 September – 23 October 2021
Centrespace, Bristol
6 Leonard Ln, Bristol BS1 1EA, United Kingdom

Wed – Sat 11.30-15.30

Opening – 25th September 2021, 11.30am, Centrespace Gallery
BOOK TICKETS EVENT – Helen Sear and Robert Darch in Conversation with Ken Grant, 25 September 2021, 2-3pm

Turn to Return brings together two series of work, ‘Within Sight’ by Helen Sear and ‘The Island’ by Robert Darch, both exhibited here for the first time. Sear’s series was made whilst repeatedly walking the same mountain passage in Majorca and Darch’s work was made in response to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016. On the surface, the series are disparate both visually and in subject matter. However, when presented and interacting within the exhibition space, further similarities become apparent.

‘Each set of photographs ask us to respond to an imbalance, a rift in what we assume to be true and the way we see reality. They ask us to pause and consider the routes we haven’t taken – to recognise that movement and stasis can coexist.’ – Millie Bethel, curator.

Sear’s ‘Within Sight’ was created during the month of December 2019, whilst she was artist in residence at CCA Andratx. The series consists of black and white images of dense but delicate pines alongside images focused on large boulders manipulated into bold colours. 

‘‘Within Sight’ explores visual noise and density within a series of photographs taken at different times along the same mountain path on the island of Majorca. The images exist at the interface between inner vision and exterior reality, where the path forward grounds the viewer in the proximity of the present rather than promising a distant view depicted in many traditional landscapes. The similarity of the black and white images evokes the repetitive nature of enchantment, the gemstone colouring of the rocks playing with scale and physicality, bringing the entire body into the act of viewing.’

– Helen Sear

Darch’s series, ‘The Island’, is a reaction to Britain’s leave vote in 2016. It was shot over a period of 17 months and comprises both monochrome landscapes and portraits.

‘The island reflects the current political uncertainty about the future of this country and expresses my anxieties, hopes and fears about a decision that will affect generations for years to come. There is an overriding sense of melancholy within the series emphasised by the bleak monochrome imagery and cold winter light, shifting from dark corners, intimate portraits, misty landscapes and isolated figures. There is an unreality to ‘The Island’, a dreamlike quality that reflects the surreality of the current political landscape.’ 

– Robert Darch

Helen Sear’s practice focuses on the co-existence of human, animal, and natural environments and is rooted in an interest in Magic Realism, Surrealism and Conceptual Art. She studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London, Slade School, and her photographic works became widely known in the 1991 British Council exhibition, De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain. Sear was the first woman to represent Wales with a solo exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale 2015. She was recently voted one of the key 100 women photographers practicing globally by The Royal Photographic Society : Hundred Heroines. She was visiting professor at the Royal Academy Schools, London between 2014 and 2019.

Robert Darch is a British artist-photographer based in the South West of England. He has published and exhibited widely and his photographs reside in public and private collections. His practice is motivated by the experience of place, in which the physical geography and material cultures of places merge with impressions from contemporary culture that equally influence perception. He holds an MFA with distinction in Photographic Arts and a MA with distinction in Photography & the Book from Plymouth University. He also has a BA with honours in Documentary Photography from Newport, Wales.  Darch is an Associate Lecturer in Photography at Plymouth University.

3 – 6 and 12 – 14 September 2021 | 11.00 – 16.00
St. Michael on The Mount Without
Bristol BS2 8DT

Bristol Photo Festival has been collaborating with St.Michaels on the Mount primary school supporting their year loBristol Photo Festival has collaborated with St Michaels on the Mount Primary School to support their year-long photography project  documenting the school life during the pandemic. The festival provided mentoring sessions and also worked with BPF exhibition photographer, Lua Ribeira, to deliver a workshop with the pupils during the rehearsal of their end of the year play, Twelfth Night. The workshop was inspired by her current exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art Galleries. The resulting photographs will be exhibited at St Michael’s on the Mount Without’s newly restored crypt in September.

We can all agree that one of the places that suffered the most during this health crisis are schools, its teachers and pupils. The learning experience has been completely interrupted many times throughout last year, home-schooling became a reality, teachers and parents had to be imaginative about how to keep kids’ going.

On the 12th of November of 2020, a very special proposal came into our inbox:

Which reads:

” We are pupils from the Year Six (Birch) class at St Michaels’s Primary School. Our school is full of pupils from different countries and different backgrounds. Since the first day of the school year we have been taking photographs of our class to document our last year of primary school. We already have many photographs!

We are writing to you because we would like to take part in the Bristol Photo Festival. In addition, it would be amazing if we could exhibit our images in Bristol. Perhaps you could help us with this? Sadly, we are unable to show you our pictures at the moment, hopefully you will really like them when you get to see them.”

The letter we received was the beginning of a very exciting relationship between Birch Class in their final year of primary school and the Photography Festival. Fortunately, the lifting of some COVID restrictions meant that we could finally visit the pupils and view  their images. We also met the class teacher Lauren Springett and the class teaching assistant Rob Browne whose idea it was to make a photographic record of the school year.  

Alejandro Acín, Engagement and Education Director, talks about this collaboration with Robert Browne.

AA: The first edition of the festival explores the themes around Sense of Place which have taken a completely new meaning after the pandemic came into our lives.  There have been many challenges for all of us during the various national lockdowns here in the UK, but primary schools have especially been a critical place. Could you tell us a little bit about these challenges?

RB: “The biggest challenge as a class is that we are in our own ‘bubble’; our ‘place’ is one classroom and a part of the school playground. Being confined to such a small place has at times been difficult/claustrophobic for all involved. We have certainly missed interacting with others in school and missed out on many trips outside of school. The numerous lockdowns have been detrimental to our pupil’s learning and for some it has had a negative effect on their social skills and mental health. “

AA: Without a specific documentary aim, you proposed the students to use participatory photography during the various lockdowns. How did this idea come about? 

RB: “It was never intended for the project to be a historical document of a year 6 class in a primary school during a pandemic.  Our original aim was to build up a collection of images to remember our final year together and to share these images with the rest of the school (so that they would know what we were up to)”.

AA: Your class has definitely been living through this important time but now these photographs will become a very poignant record too. What’s the emotional and historical value of them? How do you think these images will be perceived in 5o years time?

RB: “Yes, we have been living it, but many others have too. We have been lucky, COVID came for a couple of visits (staff and pupils) but no one was seriously ill. Education staff in Bristol have died from COVID. At this point in time, we are all emotionally involved in the project and have no idea if there is a historical value to the images. The images are of our friends, our pupils and our colleagues, people we care about. St Michael’s is sadly closing at the end of the school year, and I know that I will be looking back at these images in the years to come with happy memories. I would hope that the pupils will be doing the same. Perhaps it’s for others to decide whether the images have a historic value, it would be amazing if they did.”

AA: During my research as an engagement and education director for the festival I have noticed the lack of visual literacy programmes in primary but also secondary schools. Considering we are living in a incrementally visual dominated world, where we all are producers and consumers of images from a very early age, how important is it for children to know about the role and function of photographs as a skill for life?

RB: “I do believe it is important that children understand the role of images in their lives. Why one image is used rather than another, why a certain image can produce a particular emotion.  Photography can be used to inspire and educate, but sadly it can also be used to manipulate and lie.”

Thanks Wex Photo & Video for providing a camera to deliver this workshop with Lua Ribeira. All the details regarding the upcoming exhibition in September at the Mount Without crypt will be announced soon in our social media and website. Keep your eyes peeled!

Over Spring/Summer 2021 Bristol Education Partnership held a photography competition in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival and the Soil Association.

The theme was “Growing Spaces” and we invited students at all partner schools to submit their best images relating to this theme. The photograph could be taken at home, at school or out in the community. The aim was to showcase and celebrate the natural, growing world of flowers, vegetables, weeds, plants, trees – and even people.

There were three categories for entries and winners – KS3, KS4 and KS5. The competition was judged by a panel including a representative of Bristol Photo Festival, a representative from the Soil Association and a representative from BEP.

All winning and highly commended entries are to be displayed in an online exhibition space hosted by Bristol Photo Festival which will go live on Friday 2 July. The winner in each of the three categories will receive: a copy of Growing Spaces by Chris Hoare, a voucher and certificate. All highly commended entries will receive a voucher and certificate.

THANK YOU TO ALL THOSE WHO ENTERED THE COMPETITION. THE STANDARD WAS HIGH AND JUDGING WAS DIFFICULT.

KS3 CATEGORY

WINNER

Highly Commended

KS4 CATEGORY

WINNER

Highly Commended

KS5 CATEGORY

WINNER

Highly Commended

17 June 2021 7PM | ONLINE (ZOOM) | FREE

BOOK YOUR TICKETS

www.photopoetrysurfaces.com

What is visual poetry and photo-poetry? Is it anything – or perhaps a wide continuum of forms, methods of collaboration and visual presentation which have in common experimenting with ways to combine the textual and visual (and in this program, photographic) components?  The work produced can be as much about the content of the text and images as it is about the nature of the letters, words, design, materials, processes, and images. The result could take the form of book, collage, poster, installation or a whole range of other approaches to fusing word and image. When successful, in whatever form, the combination of text and image is much more than illustrative and elicits a dialog and questions in the reading of the work. The presentation of such material could be in book form, displayed as an object or on the wall, or performed in combinations of reading, sound, visuals, etc. 

As part of the Bristol Photo Festival, the photo-visual-poetics activities (organized by David Solo, Astra Papachristodoulou and Paul Hawkins) will be exploring and presenting a range of photo-poetic works. The programs will include mapping out the range of combinations (and sometimes going outside the lines), exhibiting a selection of current examples, and presenting mixed media presentations of the work.  We’re also hosting conversations about the nature of such collaborations, how such material may be “read” and looking at ways to assess or evaluate it.

Pairing or fusing poems and photos goes back almost to the beginning of photography with many approaches, starting with simple illustration (largely replacing engraved illustrations or including photos of drawings) and progressing as print technology and artistic trends evolved. In the 20^th and 21^st centuries exploration of this form has been a constant part of many avant-gardes and experimentation and has been embraced by social, political and conceptual movements. The fusing of poem and photo evolved to embrace many forms of combining the two into visual poems. With today’s technology and increasing proliferation of, and ability to modify and synthesize, images these opportunities are greater than ever.

For the 2021 edition of the festival, we’ve chosen a range of work made in the last few years by both emerging and established artists that highlights the breadth of ideas being expressed through verse and photo. The work (ranging from books pairing photos and poems by Amak Mahmoodian, Tom Hicks/Liz Berry, and Sarah Cave/Dragana Jurisic to combinations of text and image in single works by SJ Fowler / Bård Torgersen, Vik Shirley and Silje Ree to objects and experimental work by Astra Papachristodoulou and James Knight) will be presented in an online exhibition and in a physical and online catalog with a subset of the artists talking about and performing their work in events during the festival.  

The program will be conducted in 2 parts:

Part 1 – Panel conversation
David Solo
Chris McCabe
Federica Chiocchetti
Jon Nicholls

30-40 minutes discussion (and some slides) that will discuss the history/genre of photo-poetry including visual poetry.  This will further explore the spectrum of work from photo-poetry (paired text and image) to visual poetry to poem objects to poem films — both in physical and digital form (including IG).  The group will discuss what makes such work successful (which may vary for different points on the spectrum), forms of collaboration and how the works may be read by audiences.

5 minute break

Part 2 – Artist presentation and conversation – 50 minutes
Tom Hicks/Liz Berry
Sarah Cave/Dragana Jurisic
Astra Papachristodoulou
Paul Hawkins
SJ Fowler
James Knight
Vik Shirley

Final conclusions and Q&A

18 June – 31st September 2021 | Mon-Sun 9.00-17.00

Windmill Hill City Farm | Philip St, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 4EA

Looking at the stories and history of both allotments and allotment holders, members of the public were invited to contribute to an online archive throughout 2020 and 2021 lockdowns with photographs and stories. From sneaky foxes to vibrant redcurrants, this archive aims to highlight and pay tribute to the creativity of both photography and growing. A selection of this archive will be displayed in this outdoor exhibition which will be touring around Bristol City Farms.

Historically, photography has always been used to document the evolution of species. It was a key way to record different kinds of fruits and vegetables, celebrating the best examples and warning of the infestations, moulds and fungi that may disrupt growing. As photographs started coming in to the archive, the pride and joy of growing your best ever pumpkin or tomato was still apparent. Vibrant examples of apples, chillies and beetroot graced the Instagram feed. 

Submissions to the archive also revealed the imagination and creativity of both practices. Self-made trelliswork and bird-deterring plastic bottles showed the ingenuity of allotment holders; their ability to be practical and innovative to produce creative solutions. But photographs of their spaces also revealed the layered beauty of colours and textures throughout the allotment: rusty wheelbarrows and skyscrapers become part of a bigger composition, blending into a landscape of soft pink and green; the everyday turned magnificent.

Perhaps most tellingly, the archive draws upon the positive benefit photography and urban agriculture can have upon our wellbeing. Many recent studies have explored how both activities can improve self-esteem, quality of life and help us reconnect with others and the environment. The contributed photographs definitely show these advantages. We see friends, parents, children, siblings and communities coming together to grow or socialise. But we also see quiet moments of reflection: the still and calm of stopping for a cup of tea under hazy afternoon cloud or noticing flowers in full bloom and stopping to capture their beauty. 

These mindful moments are essential in all of our lives and perhaps now even moreso in times of Covid and isolation. Having a balance between free time and the other routines of life has become increasingly important. Both photography and growing provide a time to relax and focus the mind and Dig it Yourself draws light on the significance of these shared purposes. For Bristol Photo Festival 2021 a selection of photographs and stories from the archive will be exhibited around Bristol’s city farms and various allotment spaces. We hope you can join us as we delve into the world of growing, exploring its stories and connections to photography.

The participants involved are Shaun Jackson, Claudia Melina, Colin Moody, Danilo Murru, Helen Ashby, Kineta Hill, Tom Pelly, Jamie Castairs, Marco Kesseler, Rupert Hopkins, Emma Case, Horfield & District Allotment Association, Miriam Manco, Alan Mann, Jenny Roozel, Jack Bateman, Oscar Morland, Rudi Thoemmes, Colin Pantall, Christopher Manson, Steve Laurie, Darren O’Brien, Rachael Munro-Fawcett, James Hudson, Ian Harris, Mayeli Villalba, Ken Grant, Martin Parr, Peter Mitchell, Jon Roche, Jenny Lewis and Kirstin Whimster,.

1 June 2021 – 1 September 2021 | Tue-Sat 11.00-18.00 | Sun 11.00-17.00

Arnolfini | 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA

Jessie Edwards-Thomas has co-designed and co-produced ‘Grey Areas’, a photographic dialogue with five individuals who are currently within or have experienced the ‘homelessness pathway’ with complex needs in Bristol.

The work was created during the winter of 2020/21, the year of the pandemic; when our basic needs for shelter and safety were highlighted across the nation. Our concerns were rooted in the question ‘what does Home mean to our sense of Wellbeing?’ What is continuing to happen to our city spaces which is pushing people further and further away, physically, mentally and socially? Hidden individuals sit in corners, on the edge of boundaries, lingering in doorways, creating a land of limbo mirroring the experiences individuals undergo everyday in the homeless pathway. How are individuals expected to navigate this homeless pathway? Grey Areas reflects the impact our physical spaces have upon our mental spaces. This work does not provide answers, but asks you, the viewer, to question the broken perceptions we may hold.

This original body of work has been produced during Blueprint: Housing & Wellbeing, an artistic commission by Arnolfini and Bristol Photo Festival in collaboration with Golden Key Partnership supported by ArtFund and the Arts Council England.

18 June 2021 – 31 July 2021 (Amended)

Wednesday to Saturday 11.30- 16.30 (Friday 18 opened until 6pm)

VENUE: BPF Public Gallery | Unit CG13, Castle Gallery, Bristol, BS1 3XD

Elective Affinities: Billy Barraclough – Debsuddha – Jenna Garrett – Kelly O’Brien – Maria Gracia Cebrecos – Sibusiso Bheka

The tension between culture and nature is a matchmaking force that has occupied our minds for centuries. In a current system that dehumanizes and separates, ‘Elective Affinities’ brings together a series of personal stories that investigate universal themes inviting the reader’s reflection on the human condition. Through six visual essays, these authors observe connections between people, their beliefs and actions by exploring family narratives, the process of grief and loss, the margins of social standards, mythological representations, the relation between faith and place and the imact of urban racial segregation. The resulting work has been produced throughout Catalyst, an international mentorship programme, supporting six innovative photographers working alongside a group of international mentors; consisting of artists, designers, curators, educators and photographers. The programme is designed to further their personal careers and widen their approach and methods to photographing. 

The programme is directed by IC Visual Lab in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival.

John’s Notebooks | Billy Barraclough

‘John’s Notebooks’ is written in marker pen across one of the boxes I pull down from the attic. A photographer and writer, my father left behind an archive and boxes full of notebooks, letters, drawings, paintings and other objects that have been stored away since his death 15 years ago. It was on returning to live in my family home and rediscovering the archive and objects belonging to my father that the work started to be made. John’s Notebooks’ explores the memories and emotions connected to the loss of my father that are stored in the landscape of the family home and surrounding area, in the family members who live here and in the objects he left behind.

Engaging my father’s pictures alongside my own, ‘John’s Notebooks’ becomes a conversation between father and son around legacy and as much about presence as absence.

Belonging | Debsuddha

Belonging is a visual story where as a nephew and a photographer I, Debsuddha, have been sharing the companionship and psychological struggle of my own elderly unmarried aunts Swati and Gayatri Goswami who have spent a lifelong social seclusion due to the discrimination they have faced within their social surroundings for being born as an albino. In short, they are survivors of the racial injustice that they had to deal with since their childhood which has greatly affected them psychologically. Companionship is a vector to build a space that can gradually grow as a place, sometimes virtually or sometimes physically, that floats through and shapes the psychology which reflects in times of crisis. Kolkata, India.

This Holy Hill | Jenna Garrett

This Holy Hill explores spirituality and myth in America through a rural vacation town. Branson, Missouri has a population of 11,400 nestled in the Ozark Mountains. For more than a century it’s served as a much-loved tourist destination, drawing an estimated 7 million a year at its height. The region champions a particular subset of American values, but perhaps most of all, a belief it is blessed by God. 

I was born an hour north of Branson. As a child, I visited several times a year. My work examines the foundation on which I was raised. Through a combination of documentary and staged images, I create a nuanced portrait of a worldview often over-simplified. America has a long history of decreeing ordinary places holy, blending nature and the divine as proof of its intended destiny. It’s a story grandly told, partially true and deeply felt.

Are You There? | Kelly O’Brien

There was a single moment of near contact with my father when I was 7 years old; as his hand suddenly reached through the letterbox of my mother’s front door. He died 8 years after this brief encounter took place. It would take another 8 years until I would learn of his death, from the mouth of my grandma as we wandered through the aisles of our local supermarket.

Over the preceding years, discovering information about my father proved near impossible, with family members only revealing fragments of who he might have been and what he might have been like. In an attempt to uncover this immaterial man, I collaborate with clairvoyants to trace an impression of my estranged father. The information gathered is translated within a visual framework where psychic drawings, automated writing and attempts to communicate with my father are integrated.

LoHaitz | Maria Gracia Cebrecos

In the search through my origins, I discovered that my second last name, originally written as ‘Loaiza’, comes from the words in euskera: “Lo” which means a sleep and “Haitz” which means rock.

In the Basque Country, Koba or the cave is a fundamental space that contains layers of history, myth and knowledge throughout all time. In various legends, it was believed that these were occupied by mythological creatures as they were the portals that connected the terrenal life to the nuclei of the Earth or underground world. These were not only inhabited in the imagery of people but also in Paleolithic times, rupestral paintings evidence a coded language in nature connected with Amalur, Mother Earth.

‘LoHaitz’ is a constant hypnagogic journey where portals are the transitional element in the landscape to trespass these parallel worlds. These are conductors where perhaps that blur boundary that divides them no longer really exists. The project wakes up our senses stimulating the presence of encrypted creatures in nature. It also questions if myth is sleeping in these elements or if we humans, in actual times, have been submerged into a numb state by our reason. Where we are losing sensitivity, disabling us to connect and perceive with our purest origin: nature.

Stop Nonsense | Sibusiso Bheka

In township-taal, a wall around your house is called a ‘stop nonsense’ as in, go away, don’t bother me, ‘stop your nonsense’. A ‘stop nonsense’ is a symbol to everyone who passes by that you are going up in the world. It is a barricade of spears between yourself and your environment. That you have something now, worth securing, worth looking after. This documentary project takes place at my grandmother’s house in a township called Thokoza. The township was established in the early 1950’s under a racial segregation government act and not much has changed since. In this documentary project I use the physical barrier of a wall as a canvas to represent the past and present experiences which led my grandmother to build the ‘stop nonsense’ around her house, as well as to express the psychological or symbolic barrier between neighbours and their environment. The inspiration for this body of work comes from childhood memories of growing up in my grandmother’s house and through observing my surroundings.

18 June – 18 August 2021 | Mon-Sun 9.00-18.00

Royal Fort Gardens | University of Bristol Bristol BS8 1UH

Growing Spaces by photographer Chris Hoare is a chronicle of urban land cultivation in Bristol. Since April 2020, Hoare has been slowly and methodically documenting the allotment-goers, landscape and seasonal changes across the official and unofficial growing spaces of the city. The resulting photographs, originally commissioned by Bristol Photo Festival, are published in this new book Growing Spaces to coincide with an exhibition of the work at the inaugural festival in summer 2021.

Hoare’s project documents eleven sites across the city from established allotment sites to community gardens and improvised plots on disused lands. The project was conceived pre-Covid-19 pandemic but its timing, coinciding with increased demand for green spaces for cultivating produce, allowed him to capture the formation and energy of a growing renaissance.

The allotment system recognised today originated in the 19^th Century. Land was given to the labouring poor to allow them to grow food at a time of rapid industrialisation with no welfare state in place. Allotments were transformed during the famous ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign during World War II and since then their popularity has wavered. Over time, the stereotype of an allotment goer came to depict a middle-class pastime for retirees. However, in recent years this image of urban land cultivation has evolved as an increasing number of economically and environmentally-conscious young people, families and ethnic minorities are claiming plots. In the process, they are transforming the fertile growing spaces with their own choice of produce and farming methods.

With demand outstripping supply, urban dead spaces have been commandeered and rejuvenated and their value realised through the process of growing. The allotment has provided the multiple benefits—increasing sustainable local food production whilst simultaneously providing a haven away from home, and an escape, during the current pandemic . 

Chris Hoare (1989) was born in Bristol where he currently lives and works. In 2019 he gained his MA in Photography from University of West of England. His work focuses on the overlooked in society, exploring themes of identity and place, whilst utilising ‘speculative documentary’ to tell visual stories in a loose metaphorical way. His work has been exhibited at National Portrait Gallery, London, Paris Photo and Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol. In 2020 he was a finalist in the Palm* Prize and awarded a GRAIN Covid-19 response bursary. His work has been published in The Guardian, Fisheye, SEASON, HUCK, The Wire, Soccerbible, Les Inrockuptibles, Lufthansa Magazine, Timeout, The Commuter Journal, B24/7 and Bristol Magazine.