Private view: 17 September, 6pm - 9pm

18 September - 17 October

 

Album is an exhibition comprised of new and existing works by 17 artists currently studying on the Royal College of Art's Photography MA course. Working across the disciplines of photography, film and video, new site-specific works, which seek to respond to the particularities of the surrounding area and Wolstenholme project space, will also be produced.

 

Whilst the exhibition does not seek to tie individual artists together via an overarching thematic structure, a unified intention to create and reconstitute existing works, in relation to the project space, is common to them all. Intrigued by the prospect of exhibiting in an unconventional gallery space, the decision to show at Wolstenholme was made, by the group, in order to allow a reciprocity of influence to take place.

 

For Rebecca Court this has enabled the development of a site specific work across the buildings exterior, and for Tom Pope the interior network of doors provides a framework for the production of a work in which the site visitor will be made to perform. For others presenting still or moving image works the removal of pieces from the context of an ostensibly neutral white cube, provides a unique opportunity for a renewed or unique reading to take place. Similarly, the site itself will, in hosting the collection, be subject to a process of transformation and re-reading.

 

Album is part of the Independents exhibitions programme that runs parallel to the 2010 Liverpool Biennial. On Saturday 18 September at 1pm, Album curator Morgan Quaintance, an MA student from the RCA Curating Contemporary Art (Inspire) course and the exhibiting artists will give a talk about the work in the exhibition.

 

The RCA Photography Department has a world-renowned reputation for providing a critical and educational environment in which students can develop as artists with photography at the core of their practice. Alumni of the course include successful practitioners working in both fine art and the commercial sector, including Alison Jackson, Bob Carlos Clarke, Sophy Rickett, Hannah Starkey, Paul Smith, Tom Hunter and Idris Khan.

 

 

Image:
George Petrou
video still, 2010

 

September 10 - October 16, 2010
opening reception September 10, 2010 6-8pm

 

Chris Verene's first show at Postmasters will present over forty photographs made during the past twenty-six years. This landmark exhibition of documentary storytelling chronicles a group of closely-knit characters from the photographer's family and their rural Illinois community. The photographer is also one of the characters-- his blood bonds and bonds of friendship within the small town are carefully spelled out in simple handwritten captions atop the colorful pictures. Verene's new book, "Family," published this summer, contains many of the images on view - it opens with his cousin Candi's divorce. Candi was made famous when her wedding picture appeared on the cover of Verene's first book ten years ago. Both husband and wife were fired in the Maytag factory closing described in President Obama's first address to the United States in 2004 and in the 2010 State of the Union. Theirs is not the only family torn apart by the economic struggles of the country, as Verene documents other similar stories. The exhibition will also bring to light recent developments in the artist's intimate life, as his young child, Nico, Brooklyn-born and half-Puerto Rican, appears throughout the latest photographs, playing with his cousins and newfound friends in Galesburg. This show will offer an extraordinary, inspiring, hopeful, and sometimes sorrow-filled view into the true personal stories and private lives of the artist's immediate and extended family in their small community as photographed throughout a lifetime in economically depressed Galesburg, Illinois. Museums currently showing Verene's work include The Tate Modern, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The New Orleans Museum of Art.

 

 

Image:
CHRIS VERENE
Amber's First Two Kids, Mercedes and Jayden-Lexus, 2010
chromogenic print with handwritten caption in oil
30 x 36 inches
edition of 6 + AP
Courtesy of Postmasters Gallery, New York

 

 

Postmasters Gallery
459 West 19th Street (at 10th Avenue)
New York, NY 10011
T +1 212 727 3323