A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW

About

A Lecture Upon The Shadow brings together new work by six emerging artists from the North West and Shanghai. Using different approaches, the artists play with light, shadow and form to re-imagine familiar situations, exploring photography's relationship to illusion and the everyday. The exhibition takes its title from a poem by the English Renaissance poet John Donne. It is a unique collaboration between Open Eye and ShanghART, Shanghai's leading commercial gallery. The six exhibiting artists are: David Jacques (Liverpool); Tabitha Jussa (Liverpool); David Penny (Manchester); Fan Shi San (Shanghai); Man Yi (Shanghai) and Liang Yue (Shanghai). David Jacques' provocative new body of work Corpus Mercantoria (2012) was censored by the Chinese authorities when ‘A Lecture Upon the Shadow' was exhibited in Shanghai. Appearing here for the first time, Corpus Mercantoria takes as its starting point the photographic portraits that appear when ‘C.E.O.' is entered as a search term in Google Images. Sporadic and fractured, the work delivers a satirical account of corporate culture and capitalist ideology Liang Yue's new photographs Numerous Continuation: Summer Autumn Chaos (2012) were taken in deteriorating lighting conditions and capture frozen moments from everyday life. By subtly manipulating her images, Liang Yue enhances the effects of natural and artificial light on the camera lens and the surface of the image, creating imaginary scenes caught somewhere between twilight and darkness. Fan Shi San's project Two of Us (2009 -) explores the identity formation of people born in China since the introduction of the one child policy (a population control measure that applies to married, urban couples, in place since 1978). Constructing images of young people together with their imaginary reflections, the works are suggestive of separation and loneliness, as the two characters in the images never seem to be able to communicate. Man Yi's Memory of Water (2006 — 2010) traces details of a landscape surrounding the Yangtze River as it follows its natural course through the Yangtze region and into the East China Sea. Details are barely visible, caught in darkness, evoking a strange sense of detachment and unease. Man Yi's experiments with light and depth of field create illusory spaces that are full of suspense and difficult to define. A Lecture Upon The Shadow premiered at ShanghART's H Space from 27 July to 27 August 2012 as part of the UK Now Festival, a major visual and performing arts festival taking place across China from April — November 2012.