Clive Richards & Gerry Smith:
Streets Seen and Moments Privѐs
Exhibition runs from 21 June – 2nd July 2010
Opening hours Mon- Fri 9.30 -16.30
click here for Exhbition review by Dave Phillips
STREETS SEEN BY CLIVE RICHARDS
An exhibition of photographs taken in various cities
On my travels, occasionally undertaken for pleasure, but most often directed by some business purpose, I try to snatch a little time to explore the streets of the various cities I visit or pass through. On such expeditions I delight in seeing things that may be a commonplace for the local inhabitants, but to my stranger’s eye are intriguing or even delightful (acknowledging that one may also encounter the shocking and distressing – wherever one may go!).
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What particularly fascinates me are scenes of everyday life and trade carried out on the streets, especially when free from the domination of national or multinational corporations which tend to bring a certain homogeneity and graphic tidiness to the visual landscape of many places. With my pocket digital camera I attempt to capture something of what are for me the strange and even occasionally puzzling moments that I encounter on these excursions. Looking for these visual oddities may be some kind of an antidote to another world – the world of my commercial activities as a graphic information designer. Here, for the most part, my clients are, or serve, large corporate bodies and my work is concerned with bringing about order and clarity of communication by using approaches informed by modernist principles of visual precision, graphic economy and presentational uniformity. |
By contrast my explorations of city streets are to collect optical confusions and sometimes the visually intractable. Rather than the sleek and precise I am attracted to the quaint and disordered, the apparently chaotic and confusing or improvised – sometimes even the disfigured. This includes what I have elsewhere referred to as the ‘accidental subversion’ of information presentations, such as torn posters and other types of distressed graphics. These can take on new meanings through vandalism and artless reconfigurations.
There are distinct differences between the characters of the processes I deploy in the two worlds. My professional design work is marked by clear communication intentions for identified audiences, pursued through extended periods of analysis, planning and development resulting in carefully crafted outcomes - and usually decent fees!
The other world of ‘Streets Seen’ is marked by serendipity. There is no prescribed communication intention, nor defined audience. There is little planning and each scene is snapped in a moment – reflection, selection and analysis come later. In so far as there is one, I am the client.
There are, however, some common features shared between these two otherwise different realms of activity – one is the rectangular frame. In the case of graphic information design this is either the printed page or the computer screen. In the case of my ‘Streets Seen’ the rectangle is the LCD viewing window of my camera or the finished photographic print on paper.
The other common feature is the importance I attach to the spatial relationships displayed within the rectangle. As with my graphic information design work my photographs must be compositionally satisfying to me. My influences here are drawn from a wide range within the visual arts and the sources may be obvious to many. The work of the photographers Robert Doisneau, Andre Kertesz and Willy Ronis I feel particularly obliged to acknowledge.
In sharing my images in this exhibition I hope visitors will find something of interest in them. They were selected for ‘Streets Seen’ from the following series:
Accidental Subversions AS / Found Abstractions FA / Strange Moments SM / Street Traders ST / Travel Mementos TM / Visual Oddities VO
‘Streets Seen’ features the cities of:
Amman / Amsterdam / Bangalore / Coventry / Delhi / Florence / Los Angeles / Mumbai / Pune / Rome / Shanghai / Vienna / York /
Gerry Smith: Moments Privѐs
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This exhibition of photographs are from a journey of discovery through northern France in May 2008 with my dear friend Pauline Sands.
One of the greatest contributions of Claude Monet to modern art was the introduction of the concept of "series", that is, a single subject represented in various paintings under different conditions of light, weather, etc, unlike Monet my series “Moments Privѐ” take a single subject, people on a beach where the pebble stones and concrete sea defences are the common element and the people change. |
I love watercolours and the way edges are created, by introducing this element in to my "series" of digital photographs, as you get closer to the image your relationship with it changes as in human relationships and life.
