Techne

About

The word ‘techne’ is the term given by ancient Greeks to the practice of making and doing, as opposed to ‘episteme’ which is related to knowing. In their guise as technicians, it is the making and doing and the promotion of craft and skill that defines their role. These skills that have been honed over years are regularly put into the service of their own creative concerns. This exhibition showcases their personal photographic endeavours that are wide-ranging and ambitious in scope.

Tyrone Anderson in Don’t Smileuses the cyanotype process to produce a set of dispassionate studies on youth. Employing a process that was most prominently used to reproduce architectural blueprints, this typology of a hundred heads invites the viewer to examine the human face as an object free of emotion or expression. The repetitive nature of the portraits, methodically captured over two years, emphasizes the idiosyncrasies of the human face and calls to attention both our similarities and our differences. 

In Shaped by Stone, photographer Mario Popham collaborates with artist Tom Baskeyfield to examine the turning of a hillside into a town. The work was made in the town of Macclesfield and the neighbouring quarry at Tegg’s Nose and seeks to question man’s complex relationship to the natural environment. Working together with analogue tools and in strict monochrome, both photographer and artist establish a visual discourse that pushes at the boundaries of their respective mediums.  (Tom is also incidentally a part time technician at Macclesfield College).

Operation Jurassic, a photographic collaboration between brother and sister Pablo and Roxana Allison, explores the emotional journey leading up and after Pablo’s imprisonment, revealing personal moments and emotions. The compilation of legal documentation, paperwork, letters, drawings, diaries and photographs provide the viewer with an intimate approach of the process whilst reflecting on issues of freedom of expression and the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom. 

neo:studios is an artist-led, not-for-profit organisation based in Bolton, founded to aid the development of creative practitioners.