Take only what you can carry

About

Faucett began making work in Ukraine after transporting medical supplies to Lviv in March of 2022. This initial contact developed into a photographic project that has spanned the past two and a half years including working with the Ukrainian diaspora in London and making several trips to Ukraine. The exhibition takes its name from a poem on the small, beautiful particulars of Ukrainian ways of living, written by Starobilsk-born poet Serhiy Zhadan. Remoulded into a punk song by Manhattan-based punk band Gogol Bordello and read aloud as an address in Trafalgar square by Helen Mirren, "Take only what is most important" is an expression of resilience in the face of tragedy – and the echo of tragedy inherent in that resilience. Faucett's photographic prints deal in echoes too; his work is replete with sly visual references. The Delphic expressions on the faces of Faucett's huddled crowds feel painted - they could easily be the half-lit subjects of a Goya work. But his less claustrophobic, more expansive shots - slivers of a bombed-out building, a dismantled bridge shot against the twilight - are distinctly modern, employing the slippery framing techniques and wry humour that transformed fine art photography in the 1950s. In spite - or perhaps because of - its broad frame of reference, the work exhibited in "Take only what you can carry" has its own distinct visual language. Objects such as the crucifix, the flag, and the picture frame recur throughout the exhibition, weaving Faucett's glancing impressions into a hyperreal narrative of city life in Ukraine. Noel Faucett (b. 1980) is a photojournalist and documentary photographer. He studied at the University of Wales, Newport before completing an MA in Documentary Photography from the London College of Communication. Having made work in the USA, Japan, Belarus, Russia, and the United Kingdom, he has exhibited both in the UK and internationally. In 2014, he was a finalist in the Barcelona International Photography Awards. Faucett’s most recent project has been the art Zine Tvir; an anthology of Ukrainian literary voices in translation, juxtaposed with a selection of his own photographic works. Proceeds from both exhibition and zine sales will be distributed by Vsesvit, a Ukraine solidarity collective based in London.