9 ways to say it’s over

Exhibition curated by Keira Green and Natasha Cox, July 2013

“Spaces open up; we move closer. The photographic works assembled in 9 Ways To Say It’s Over encourage us to project ourselves onto their stilled surfaces with a sense of freedom and anxiety. The gaps in the works invite an intimacy, a sense of loss—an absent space between two mirrors. The exhibition looks to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s description of the decisive moment: that precise instant in which an image is captured—‘the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.’ 9 Ways to Say it’s Over will take place in a new large scale exhibition space housed within the currently disused office buildings at 20 Farrington Street. The exhibition brings together eight international artists working in lens-based media. Joe Clark, Sarah Dobai, Tess Hurrell, Leigh Ledare, Tim Mitchell, Heidi Specker and Stefan Zeyan all seek to unravel Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. The creative processes inherent in photography and cinema are subverted in their work, as methods are deconstructed and remade. As a single frame is cut adrift from a sequence, narrative slips out of kilter with meaning and traditional concerns such as chronology and scale are broken down. Works are deliberately installed in ways that invite the viewer to move in-between and around them; our view is obstructed before we move to a more focused vantage point.
9 Ways To Say It’s Over draws together digital and analogue photographic processes, initiating a discussion between these two techniques. The ‘Over’ of the title is in reference to the fact that a medium, any medium, can succumb to death as it is superseded by new technology. The ‘Ways’ refer to the many possible paths these contributing artists suggest, by denying us a self-contained image, and instead opening up routes that connect their work, through which we might move closer.”