SEPARATION & BELONGING

About

Separation and Belonging is a group photography exhibition centred on identity as a fluid notion. Photography’s ability to fix its subjects in history has provided the illusion that if we can retain the image of a face or of a place, we also possess a singular truth about them. But identity is an elusive concept, perpetually questioned and reinvented, floating back and forth in time. The conceptual portraiture and landscape imagery in the exhibition tackle precisely this flow of meaning.

The works of the four emerging artists based in London are concerned with how what appears to be the essence of a person, a culture or a space, as well as the relationships between them, shifts from known to unfamiliar, from new to obsolete and often vice versa.

Comprised of projects that investigate the volatility of meaning and articulate identity as a transitive process, 'Separation and Belonging' offers an open-ended experience – the viewer’s reading of photography’s eclectic language plays an active part in the puzzle..

Joel Fong looks at erosion as a formative process, with new environments being built while old buildings and cultures disintegrate. In the case of Singapore, his native country, the traditional local culture has come to compete with the influx of foreign fashion in the daily life of people. Currently in a transitional stage, many choose to hold onto cultural aspects that coincide with their way of life, allowing the rest of their traditions to fall into decay.

Gökhan Tanrıöver’s series questions the relationship between individual and landscape. Does the physical space define who and how we are or is our influence on our surroundings more significant? Covered with a plastic sheet, lying in various spaces, the artist represents himself ambiguously as either dead or asleep, transferring the responsibility of the choice to the viewer, while the space too shifts from a scene of a crime to an embracing landscape.

Natalia Panek places the human being in the intersection of reveries and inner journeys in the search for identity, somewhere between separation and belonging. The artist’s images deal with identity, consciousness and the various ways in which these themes can be perceived.

Laura Bivolaru explores nuances of her own and her younger twin sisters’ identities. Ranging from conceptual self-portraits to an intimate intrusion into her siblings’ life, her on-going series revolve around the psychology of the self and of the Other, their metamorphosis and affair with time.

Comprised of projects that investigate the volatility of meaning and articulate identity as a transitive process, offers an open-ended experience – the viewer’s reading of photography’s eclectic language plays an active part in the puzzle.