Critique Surgery

About

Redeye's Critique Surgeries are aimed at photographers or artists looking for advice and feedback on their work or practice. 

At this month's critique we welcome guest panellists Ben McDonnell (photographer), and Clarissa Corfe (photographic artist), in addition to Redeye's Director, Paul Herrmann. 

Ben McDonnell
Ben McDonnell’s work combines photography, installation and sound. He is determined as much by his abilities as a musician and composer, as he is of his appreciation of the still image. Intuitively moving between the audio and the visual, Ben is drawn to the significance of sound and silence and its impact upon pictorial space. His work invites the viewer to engage with the image as a physical experience.

Ben is currently in his final year of the Photography MA course at the Royal College of Art, and his undergraduate degree was in Improvisation and Composition at Leeds College of Music. Ben has just had a group show, Telling Tales,as part of the fringe at the Liverpool Biennial in association with Open Eye Gallery, and currently has a solo show in Studio 187 in Greenwich entitled Impossible Chords. Ben’s work has recently been published in Are We Lost? a magazine made for Offprint at the Tate Modern, Kings Cross, commissioned by curator Tamsin Dillon, and the catalogue for the Asia Triennial published by CFCCA. Ben also teaches at the Blackheath Conservatoire of the Arts. 

Clarissa Corfe
Clarissa Corfe is Contemporary Art Curator at Harris Museum & Art Gallery. She initiated and led on the commissioning of the application process that won the museum the Contemporary Art Society Award 2014 with internationally acclaimed artist Nathaniel Mellors. She has initiated and organised curatorial development trips to Istanbul, 2007, Berlin, 2008 and Havana 2012 for 31 North West based curators to meet Biennial curators and galleries, forging international links and partnerships. As a freelance curatorial consultant she has worked on artists’ professional development, organisational development as well as curatorial projects for Tatton Park Biennial, Barnaby Festival, Axis among others.

She was previously the Curator at Castlefield Gallery, where she was responsible for curating the exhibitions programme, working with national and international artists. In 2007 she undertook a 3-week research trip for theATM08 to Taiwan and in 2008 was invited on the British Council China Curatorial development trip based on the strength of the ATM08 exhibition. In 2012 she stepped up to lead the strategic development of the exhibition policy, new website and Fundraising Auction as well as feeding into the re-branding of the gallery, based on her knowledge and experience of strategic development at ACE, EM. She has previously worked at Arts Council England where she was instrumental in initiating Sideshow and Format Photography Festival. She has also worked at Tate Liverpool, Lowry Centre and Liverpool Biennial.

Paul Herrmann
Paul Herrmann is the Director of Redeye, current chair of The British Photographic Council, set up LOOK festival in Liverpool and the Northern Photography Consortium, and is currently establishing the Photographic Collections Network, which will be a knowledge exchange and advocacy network for anyone working with collections or archives, launching in Autumn 2016. Paul is happy to talk about any aspect of work but specialises particularly in business models and career paths in photography.