Field/s ONE

About

Curated by Field/s founder Thom Bridge, ‘Field/s ONE’ will see 12 artists present new works grounded in photography but also extending to video, performance and installation. Through diverse approaches they reflect on a year of conversations, charting both photography’s interconnected relationships with other mediums and technologies, but also the importance of networked communities and artist-led initiatives. This first public exhibition aims to offer exciting new perspectives on the expanded field of photography: one that crosses borders and resists easy classification.

In the works of Anja Olofgörs (SE), Emma Bäcklund (SE), Andrew Bruce (UK) and Monica Takvam (NO) the boundaries of bodily experience as rendered through photography are considered via the prisms of performance, technology and language. This is made manifest as sculpture, large-format printing and intimate video installations. Both Maria Kapajeva (EE) and Ryan L. Moule (UK) consider the complexities of family histories and relationships through secrets and unstable means. In the installations of Julie F. Hill (UK) and Helen McGhie (UK) our understanding of cosmic matter and dark spaces are questioned through 3D modeling and new research. Kim Jakobsen To’s (NO) collaborative documentation of mask-making workshops for home-educated youths and Martin Seed’s (NI) appropriated online imagery of three-hole ski masks synonymous with the troubles in Northern Ireland, both question the construction of identity. Laura Hensser (UK) and Thom Bridge’s (SE/UK) expanded practices encompass making, curation and organisation with a sustained engagement in developing communities of arts professionals. They share a keen interest for the processes and materiality of photography.

Field/s is a forum of 12 artists, curators and photographers that meets once a month. Always joined by an invited guest, Field/s aims to promote transnational, interdisciplinary and cross-generational discussions between arts-professionals. So far Field/s have been joined by a number of artists, curators and arts-professionals from Britain, Norway, Sweden and North America. Field/s is currently hosted by Gasworks. Set up with a peer forum grant awarded to Field/s coordinator Thom Bridge by Artquest in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery. Artquest's peer forum programme aims to assist artists by providing them with the funding, space and resources necessary to establish their own peer mentoring groups. 

Field/s Members represent graduates from a range of institutions including The Royal College of Art, University for the Creative Arts at Farnham, Slade School of Fine Arts, Chelsea College of Art and Valand Academy in Sweden. They've exhibited their work nationally and internationally in solo and group contexts. Venues have included FFotogallery and The Photographers’ Gallery in the UK and as far afield as Aperture in New York, the Hasselblad Center in Sweden, Matèria Gallery in Rome and Kaunas Photo Gallery in Lithuania. Field/s members have previously been shortlisted for the Jerwood/Photoworks Award and Maria Kapajeva was recently nominated for the Aperture & Paris Photo First Book Award.