Fresh Faced + Wild Eyed 2014
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Fresh Faced + Wild Eyed, the Photographers’ Gallery annual exhibition for recent graduates, has picked work from 22 finalists from an open submissions process for their new exhibition, including contorted nudes, protesters in patterns, and a short film about the memories and daily rituals of a solitary South Londoner called George …
As a platform supporting emerging talent, the show aims to celebrate both the quality and the breadth of graduate practices from photographic and related visual arts courses. Following the exhibition six of the finalists are also offered the opportunity to participate in a year-long mentoring programme.
The finalists for the seventh year of the competition, who have all graduated from a BA or MA in visual arts courses across the UK, with photography and/or digital media as their primary medium, are – James Duncan Clark, Liam Magee, Tanya Clarke, Henna Mattila, Iringó Demeter, Elina Moriya, Philipp Dorl, Katarina Mudronova, Tracey Fahy, Alice Myers, Bruno Freitas de Oliveira, Emily Price, Julio Galeote, Chloe Rosser, Victoria Jenkins, Ian Rudgewick-Brown, Lewis Khan, Marcello Simeone, Geiste Marija Kincinaityte, Nikolas Ventourakis, Lidija Kononenko, and Johanna Ward.
They were judged by a panel of photography experts, including Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers’ Gallery; David Drake, director of Ffotogallery; Sheyi Bankale, editor and founder of Next Level; and visual artist and photographer Sophy Rickett.
Here’s some of our highlights from the show…
Chloe Rosser (lead image)
(BA Photography, Falmouth University)
Rosser’s series Form depicts contorted nude figures, where the familiar shape of the body becomes an almost inhuman sculptural form.
“The work is an unsettling exploration into the human condition,” says Rosser, “demonstrating an alienation from our own bodies.”
Philipp Dorl
(MA Fine Art Photography, RCA)
Primarily working in black and white, Dorl’s work investigates surfaces (including that of the photograph) and illusion, with many of his naturalistic and often humorous compositions becoming abstract image that play with the symbolic nature of photography.
Ingingo Demeter
(BA Fashion Photography, London College of Fashion)
Demeter’s Violet, Violent series of black and white images depicting two identical twins, explores their delicate, but strong relationship, through various means of bonding and joining the pair together.
“I wish to accentuate a strong sense of togetherness,” says Demeter, “but one which is slightly disturbing and holds mixed feelings within it.”
Emily Price
(BA Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University)
With Saturation, Price has taken images of protestors from the internet and created decorative visual patterns though digital manipulation, layering and collage, in order to question the desensitising nature of mass media, particularly in relation to documenting war, protest and natural disasters.
Joanna Ward
(MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster)
Photographed in Scotland and England, through all seasons, I Shall Say Goodbye with My Strengthening Love for You, Forever and Ever, explores the possibility of narratives within landscapes. The images – a mix of still life, landscape and vernacular photography – sit alongside a few words, and are presented as a concertina photobook, reflecting the nature of memories to confuse time, as Ward suggests:
“The story unfolds to reflect on love, land, morality and control, in a place where time is not linear and the past, present and future find themselves sharing uncommon ground; the beginning is not the beginning and the end is not the end, and like the filing away of our memories, order is in disarray.”
Victoria Jenkins
(MA Photography, RCA)
Restaging and applying various diagrams, models and metaphors in her photography, Jenkin’s series As If It Were, explores methods of scientific research and the visual representation of abstract phenomena.
Alice Myers
(MA Photography, London College of Communication)
Myers’ Nothing is Impossible Under the Sun, is a book combining drawings, photographs and writing, creating a fragmented narrative around migration, namely the asylum seekers who try to cross the English Channel between France and the UK.
Calais is the main focus of her project, where photography is often used oppress, expose or typecast people as victims or criminals, but after frequent visits to the area, she used the medium, along with other forms of documentation, to produce a complex representation of people considered to be legally invisible.
Lewis Khan
(BA Photography, University of the West of England)
Khan’s 11-minute film Georgetown captures the life of a solitary South London resident named George. It was informed by six years of imptomptu meetings in the street where they were neighbours, and documents the daily rituals and memories of his former friends and experiences of institutionalisation.
FreshFaced+WildEyed is at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, until 20 July
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