Exhibition

Stephen Inggs 2019

22 Nov 2019 – 8 Feb 2020

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
10:00 – 17:30
Wednesday
10:00 – 17:30
Thursday
10:00 – 17:30
Friday
10:00 – 17:30
Saturday
10:00 – 17:30
Sunday
10:00 – 17:30

Save Event: Stephen Inggs 201919

I've seen this2

People who have saved this event:

close

HackelBury Fine Art

London, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Gloucester Road / High St Kensington
Directions via Google Maps Directions via Citymapper
Event map

This exhibition brings together works spanning fifteen years of Inggs’ career, including important black and white photographs and new colour photographs on view in London for the first time.

About

Today there is no part of the ocean free of human intervention. Even in the furthest regions of the southern ocean, considered a wilderness until recently, evidence of pollution with concentrations of microplastic similar to other oceans can be found. – Stephen Inggs

This exhibition brings together works spanning fifteen years of Inggs’ career, including important black and white photographs and new colour photographs on view in London for the first time.

The new colour photographs focus on the sea surrounding Cape Town, where Inggs has been an avid surfer for fifty years. His work examines his love for the sea but also a fear of the environmental impact humans are having on the oceans. Inggs says: “In its myriad states of movement and stillness, the sea is a timeless metaphor for human emotions and psychological states… But, for how long will this metaphor last? Not because we are changing, but because we are changing the sea.” This uneasiness can be felt in Saltwater I, II, and III where Inggs places himself—and therefore the viewer—in among the waves, creating the impression of being engulfed by water. The soft focus of the camera plays against the violence of the tumultuous seas.

Inggs’ largescale black and white photographs, for which he is best known, also confront the divide between delicacy and power. These works are hand-coated with silver gelatin emulsion onto cotton rag paper. The soft tactile nature of the water colour paper acts as a trompe l’oeil, blurring the boundaries between photography, drawing, and printmaking. Works such as Leafand Shears feature isolated objects against a flattened background. By eliminating three-dimensional space behind the subject matter, the seemingly quotidian objects are intensified.

Stephen Inggs speaks of his still life works as a way of exploring the history of objects, their “cultural residue and meaning.” His new photographs can be understood in the same way, where the sea in Cape Town is a regular part of daily life, steeped in a profound cultural history and, at the same time, part of an unknown global future impacted by climate change.

What to expect? Toggle

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Stephen Inggs

Comments

Have you been to this event? Share your insights and give it a review below.