Tessa Bunney - Home Work

About

Home Work is Tessa Bunney's first selling UK solo exhibition. A selection of the series of photographs will be on display and limited edition C-type prints will be available to purchase for the first time. The exhibition is timed to launch Bunney's hardback book of the same title, published by Dewi Lewis Publishing with support of Arts Council England. First shown at The Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, Home Work is an exploration of domestic labour in the craft villages of Hanoi, Vietnam. Between September 2006 and May 2008 Bunney spent two six-month periods travelling around its suburbs and villages photographing rural life. Hanoi is now the 17th largest capital city in the world with 6.2 million people, double the previous population. This has reduced the land available for agricultural farmers, and families in rural areas unable to sustain themselves, are turning to the creation of various products. Craft villages have become the meeting place between rural and urban, agriculture and industry, and over the last decade, have increased production up to five fold through small-scale industrial development. Bunney sensitively portrays the daily life of workers in the craft villages, observing techniques handed down from previous generations such as noodle making and snake catching, and newly learnt crafts for the manufacture of cuddly toys and baskets made from water hyacinth. Yet Bunney's work is concerned with the changing nature of rural life and its consequences. The increased waste and environmental pollution resulting from the increased labour provides these engaging and visually arresting photographs with serious undertones. The brightly coloured photographs observe daily labour in the unlikely context of domestic settings. Interspersed with images from daily life in the rice fields and in the villages, these photographs depict a less familiar concept of working from home where their subjects, mostly women, balance childcare with the routine work necessary for survival. Signed limited edition prints are available from the gallery: 20x24 inches, edition of 10, from £600 + VAT 30x40 inches, edition of 6, from £1000 + VAT Advanced signed copies of the new book Home Work / Tessa Bunney will be available from the gallery priced £19.99