'It's A Thin Line Between Heaven And Here'/'Pioneers'

// Katsuhito Noguchi

// IT’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HERE

// Ian Atkinson

// Mohsen Zarei-Kesheh

// Michele Clement-Delbos

// Spencer Rowell

// Victoria Kovalenko

// Emma Brennan

// Ceyda Nielsen

// Daniel Imade

// Hannah Richardson

// Michele Cremona

// Mustafa Batibeniz

// Simona Ciobotariu

// Ian Farrant

// Solmaz Tahvilzadeh

// Andrew Kennedy

// PIONEERS - The Cass MA Photography Show 9th-13th September 2010

// Digby Washer

‘It’s a thin line between Heaven and here’

Preface

In HBO’s masterpiece The Wire, due to extreme pressures, a Baltimore police major legalizes drugs in a derelict corner of the city’s west side. Crime falls across the district, and local residents praise the effect after all the corner kids are moved along out of the heavily populated areas. The viewer is privy however, to this newly created Hamsterdam, which on the one hand has a needle exchange and HIV test centre, and on the other prostitution and children dealing crack. Recovering heroin addict and police informant Bubbles describes it as ‘a thin line between Heaven and here. It’s this kind of voyeurism that makes the Wire so compelling; that mix of being unsettled yet intrigued. It is the similar mix of trepidation and wonder that is stimulated by this collection of photographs and photographers, a sense of ambiguity that makes this selection of works all the more alluring.

There’s a line quite early in Hitchcock’s Rear Window when Stella, played by Thelma Ritter, unambiguously condemns voyeuristic behaviour, especially that of her patient Jeff, played by Jimmy Stewart. She claims, “we have become a race of Peeping Toms”, the irony of this coming later in the film as she becomes as enthralled with the mysteries of Thorwald’s actions as much as Jeff does. Upon glimpsing something of the unknown even the sharpest critic can become lost in the actions that emerge from within the courtyard.

Spencer Rowell’s Memories of Childhood serve up a curious mix of nostalgia and repressed childhood anxiety. These self-reflective portraits offer the artist a way to illustrate the events that unconsciously have shaped the way in which he views the world, and by using a nude adult figure in an image of childhood reminiscence, Rowell creates an uneasy tension within the photograph. Ian Atkinson’s work, which explores photography ability to bring different times together, shows a single character in three generations of life. The boy sits with his red toy car, watched over by his older self; the red car now a reality parked out side. Atkinson’s work plays with the photographs role as a marker of time, his use of doors for example, some open and some closed or blocked, suggest the possible passage between past, present and future.

Stella seems to have got it pretty spot on, we have all become a race of Peeping Toms; we desire the same view as Jeff, standing comfortably by your window in the fourth block1, looking into the world, with the lust to know what is going on taking over. It was Jacques Lacan who suggested that as the viewer looks upon the image, it is the image that returns the gaze; the subject (or viewer in our case) is then lured deeper into what he sees. The question is, how much do we realise, as we stare out of the window, that the light has been switched on, and that the whole world is staring right back?

William F. CooperCurator

Editors Note

This exhibition catalogue, produced to coincide with the dual exhibitions It’s a thin line between Heaven and here and Pioneers, features examples of the sixteen artist’s work as well a short statement from each photographer, and a preface from the exhibitions curator.

Very special thanks must be given to those of have given their time and effort to make this an exhibition a possibility; Sue Andrews, Mick Williamson, Nick Haeffner, Ian Robertson, Lisa Rigoli, Mark Tait, James Sharman, the London Met School keeping staff and Jon Anders Gulbrandsen. The biggest thanks must go of course to all the artists who provided work for It’s a thin line between Heaven and here, as always we are indebted to their efforts.

Design and layout: Jon Anders Gulbrandsen

It’s a thin line between Heaven and here is a survey of the talent that emerged from the Sir John Cass MA Photography department over the last year. The work that teeters on the edge of uncomfortable and intriguing seems to reflect the very sense that we have when watching over Jeff’s courtyard in Rear Window, the oh-so-naughty yet unavoidable intrigue with other people’s lives. The group of photographers exhibited share more than having just studied together. Each panders to our desires and offers the viewer up a keyhole into their working practice and their lives. The works on show illuminates their Self, without having to show themselves.

Perhaps Hitchcock’s greatest mastery in Rear Window, and the source of The Wire’s tension, is the blurring of the boundary between the viewer and protagonist. In Rear Window we see almost all the action from Jeff’s perspective; never leaving his front room. Instead the viewer remains wheelchair bound as other characters enter and leave at will. The viewer instead witnesses everything through binocular or telephoto lens, gazing on from Jeff’s window, we become fascinated with the lives of others; Miss Lonely Heart, Newly Married Couple, Suave Composer, and of course Thorwald.

This boundary, of viewer and subject, has been crossed too in It’s a thin line between Heaven and here; Moshen Zarei’s studies of the lonely nude figure have similar voyeuristic qualities to the cast in Jeff’s courtyard telephoto-theatre. The sense of solitude, her closeness to comfort, acceptance and welcome are made all the more distant by her nudity and the intimate surroundings we see her in. An entirely different kind of isolation is seen in Daniel Imade’s photographs; attempting to find the personality hidden in the office cubicle, Imade builds a portrait of an unknown sitter. The very fact that we cannot see the person behind the desk makes these works so powerful, the lack of human presence creates transience – a personality built within strict corporate regulations. Eight hours a day, five days a week, but no more.

// Andrew KennedyPersonal Anthropology

An exploration of the self and our inhabited environment, the piece relates the artist’s life, emotion and setting. The representation of the work is influenced by the periodic table; positioning the elements of life according to their properties, with gaps as there are in life, what is displayed is at the artist’s discretion.

// Ian AtkinsonThe image ‘Mr Streames’ (above) has been selected for the 2010 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition

Ian Atkinson’s work represents a reflective moment; how we are all interrelated with our past, present and future selves, and how our lives revolve around these factors. Each piece in the series uses a poster, contained in the body of the image, to reflect on photography’s ability to capture a real moment in time and suspend it, making it the focus of our memories. Within the work this referent stands as an iconic representation of the past, alongside the other apparently more tangible figures who have also been torn from the continuum of time and photographed. The viewer is encouraged to consider the multiplicity of other moments between those judged as significant that have not been recorded and question the nature of our attachment to the still photograph

// Mohsen Zarei-KeshehZarei creates an uncomfortable environment in his works where the subject seems unable to participate or connect with their surroundings. She becomes nothing more than a passer by, unnoticed even in these domestic settings. Away from home and out of comfort zones, connection with the new world can become increasingly difficult; upon leaving the familiar behind our bonds with family and friends are suddenly severed, leaving a great longing for closeness and intimacy.

In this series of photographs, The Dream, Zarei uses the nude female figure to explore the visual interpretation of dreams. Having moved to England from Iran almost a year and a half ago, the artist has been haunted by past memories of places and people from his native home. The Dream attempts to illustrate the feelings of longing the artist experienced upon emigrating, leaving behind his family, friends and all that is familiar. The sitter too, is experiencing London as an outsider having recently arrived from Lithuania, this shared history between artist and sitter creates a fascinating closeness in the work.

// Michele Clement-DelbosAs we venture within, senses stiffen and become alert; the mind’s doors are opened, left ajar and a rush of emotions inhabit the spaces; trepidation, fear, oppression, curiosity, awe and exhilaration; a slow enveloping awareness of how infinitesimally inconsequential and vulnerable we are in those domed, vaulted, cathedral-like dwellings.

These hidden spaces are now mostly redundant, relying merely on the beam of a torch or the eerie green and amber tones cast from a bare overhead bulb to illuminate momentarily their former splendour. In cavernous interiors, where once steam billowed and claxons sounded, and shining rails sang - metal on metal. The grass has now grown, the tracks are all gone and now rats and bats are all that gain sanctuary in the dark.

In this body of work, Clement-Delbos attempts to uncover a forgotten world and draw attention to the immensity of these subterranean engineering feats; to the solidity and symmetry, the oversized nuts and bolts and stamps on moulded metal and, more especially, to the sheer manpower it took to shift mountains of earth, rubble and clay to create for us, above ground, a means of being and of getting somewhere else.

Clement-Delbos’ work highlights the power, both physically and metaphorically, of the tunnel; they can be lifelines, a means of escape, somewhere to hide; to some a place of shelter and warmth, to others cold and isolation. Countries are connected, seas traversed, mountains are merged by them. Without them we remain an island, both individually and collectively.

// Spencer RowellChapter FourPeter’s Dreams

“I am here’ ‘I need to tell you something”

Photography not only records an event but also acts as a significant tool in the creation of memory and in the expression of the subconscious. From the first picture of our birth, through adolescence, and with the continued recording of significant events in our lives, we continue to use photography as a recording device. As we reproduce these events and reconcile the memories with the images, alternative realities emerge. The rendering of the disparity between memory and image can sometimes create conflict and often leads to a questioning of truth and reality.

This project presents a series of captioned photographs based on a story of ‘Peter’ as he negotiates a particular stage of his own childhood development. A small boy in the ‘Latent Phase’, he struggles to reconcile and integrate ambivalent personal relationships with his own emotions. He fears the life around him.

The story is an illustrated narrative of a life told from the perspective of a child through the voice of an adult. It is a subjective account and relies on memory. Importantly, the memories are often informed by feelings that come from a place of pre-communication.

The final piece is a seventy-two page bound book; a book similar to one that Peter might have been given at birth by his favourite uncle. Each page is a representation of Peter’s life, a page per year. Page numbers ten to twenty-two are those relevant to this particular stage of Peter’s life: represented as ‘Chapter Four’ in the book. The text also references colour plates, which illustrate the story, placed within the book.

We are intruding upon private experiences, a story of both mortality and abandonment, the exposing of vulnerability. Although a long time ago, we are witnessing this experience today and this highlights unresolved conflicts. Through the text and captioning, the artist is calling out to be heard, his internal voice speaking of his abandonment, loss and loneliness.

The images and the text together convey his story, describe another way, of a child, with his difficulties to understand or communicate the predicament he finds himself in within the outside world. “I am here. I need to tell you something”

Towards the end of the 19th century Freud wrote about dream interpretation and its theoretical relationship with childhood fears and behaviour. It is upon this psychodynamic approach that many analytical process that have followed, are based. Freud believed that very little adults did in their later years could not be explained by some form of adaptation to circumstances, repressed urges and desires experienced as a child; all of these released while asleep. The conscious mind protected any conflicts, while during sleep the unconscious mind could express hidden desires. Aspects

of the personality could therefore be understood through the interpretation of dreams.

Coined by Freud in Hysteria, the Latent Stage is a developmental period that occurs between the Phallic and Genital stages. It is a period often overlooked but characterised as a period of calm before the storm of the Genital Stage and the maelstrom of the Oedipus Complex.

The developmental transitions that occur in this phase, as others before and after, impact on the rest of your life. These transitions must be facilitated and allowed to take place as one moves from a secure base into the unreliable outside world. It is this part of his journey that is represented through the series of images.

// Victoria KovalenkoKovalenko’s deeply personal work is steeped in family history, with a found image of her great-great grandmother, taken in 1899, a starting point for her work. The artist speaks of her beauty and grace, but perhaps most interestingly for the viewer, the dichotomy of family member and complete stranger, asking questions of how we can attempt to relate the our distant relatives; “I have been trying to understand the person on it, the person who belongs to a different world”.

Her photographs attempt to blur the boundaries between generations, a visual exploration of how it feels to look so similar to some one you know, but have never met. Raising questions of family connections, closeness and loss; an illustration of how when we lose a loved one the family dynamic shifts, perhaps a coming to terms of the transience of family life which becomes more and more apparent as we grow older and move up the family tree.

The above image of a children’s playground was taken en route to the funeral of Kovalenko’s grandmother. It’s layering with the self-portrait creates an ethereal and delicate piece; a movement between the past and the future. A marker for the passing of time.

Gaeltacht regions are self-contained Irish speaking areas in the Republic of Ireland. Over the past century these regions have decreased rapidly leaving the future of the Irish language and Gaeltacht localities in an uncertain state. With the survival of the Irish language becoming more reliant on Irish speakers in larger cities dominated by the English language, the demise of the Gaeltacht districts will ultimately sever the most direct link with Irish tradition and culture.

Tír na Móna or Land made of Bog ocuses on the Irish language whose continued survival and use is inextricably linked to the landscape and topography of the area. In an effort to increase awareness and promote these unique Irish-speaking regions, the piece explores the intricate relationship between human identity and environment in a region defined by the language spoken and its distinctive landscape.

// Emma Brennan

// Ceyda NielsenSelf is made up of bits and pieces of self-reflective dialogue. There are no complete questions or answers, only an observation of the difficultly of communicating with one’s true self. Emerging from the challenges of being who you truly are creates a tension as we are so caught up in the search, we keep looking in all the wrong places- you constantly abort yourself. This project that is a documentation of self-abortion intends to free itself from its very own boundaries by diverting its un-trained attention.

// Daniel ImadeMy Space Their Space.

The corporate office. They supply you with a desk, a chair, a computer, some drawers and cupboards. They accommodate the need for relief from work with café’s and “break out” spaces, comfortable “soft areas”. It is Their Space. But within these spaces arises a need for people to assert a personality, to show who they are – family pictures, allegiance to a football team; funny messages of rebellion (“you don’t have to be mad to work here….”). They’ll seek out the hidden spaces for secret mobile phone calls, unofficial liaisons, a sneaky few minutes away to look at the news. I work in an office, I work in Their Space. But because I am in it this space becomes Mine

// Katsuhito Noguchi

// Hannah RichardsonIt was Warhol who famously claimed that in the future everyone will be famous of fifteen minutes. Hannah Richardson’s work explores ideas of identity in a society saturated by the cult of celebrity, looking at the different roles that we adopt and the ever-blurring boundaries between the staged and the real. Casting profession performers as her subjects, Richardson asked each sitter to enact a fantasy based upon a character from fiction. Her work, which draws inspiration from stage, screen and the printed page brings new life the phrase the whole world is a stage.

// Digby WasherThe following Joiner Portraits paradoxically reflect portraiture and abstraction simultaneously. They show a cue to an emotional-self as well as the artists representation of the person in front of the lens. They are accumulative images depicting an extension beyond a transitory moment that has parallels with film and an invasive expansion of spatial depth.

Taking the model of David Hockney’s ‘joiners’ they are based on human eyesight, a series of glances makes up the total perception of being somewhere or meeting someone. The artist stretches what the eye would see to allow a multitude of moments, reflected environments, and characteristics.

Every photograph taken of each subject is added to the image as a documentary record, those that don’t fit become leftover pieces of a puzzle. These Joiner Portraits are a continuing process, breathing records of each sitter.

Encouraging portraits during in the course of social meetings, Washer, in some cases even took portraits without asking. Under the current notions of portraiture and documentation, it raises the question of what happens when the stolen ‘portrait’ is not immediately recognizable as of oneself? The artist counterbalanced his snap-happy ways by offering each sitter the chance to take his portrait in return. He states, “By fragmenting my face into 238 pieces each person can recreate my face in a new set of principles so that I am constantly morphing in size, shape and form, time and space, colour and texture. In fact, I could be interpreted in many genres of portraiture without being specifically resigned to any; I am now more than a hundred different faces and yet one at the same time.”

// Ian FarrantThese images explore and highlight the concept of how we are brought up on myths and fairy tales throughout our childhood. These ideas of fantasy and myth, played out through the stories that we have been told are then used within the media to play on our unconscious mind and draw us into these idealistic and perfect lives through the acquisition of products and services. We are drawn into this perfect world of fantasy, which we tried to recreate in our own adult lives, by looking for a Prince Charming or turning ourselves into Cinderella.

The use of strong dramatic lighting in Farrant’s work draws upon the world of fashion photography, turning the scene from a children’s fable into a projection of a capitalist desire. He plays with our expectations of the fairytale genre by shooting in darkness, looking back to the Brother’s Grimm rather than Disney, where a happy ending isn’t the only outcome.

// Michele Cremonapronouns:

Adrian was born Kathaerine.

Adrian Googled ‘gay, male drag queen, trapped in a woman’s body.’

The bullying and self-hatred triggered the drinking, not the trans.

Adrian doesn’t like it when people confuse their pronouns.

Adrian took control of his life.

Adrian is very happy now.

Michele Cremona, 2010.

// Mustafa BatibenizBoth uncanny and surreal Mustafa Batibeniz’ aims to tell stories through his photographic practice. Seeing his work as neither landscape nor portrait photography, Batibeniz uses the human figures in his work serve as image of the individual but also as a metaphorical composition of his subconscious landscape. In each of his works we see the subject almost under attack from beyond the frame by some unknown Other; be it birds with feathers cascading from their bodies, or jet black ropes entangled around limbs pulling and suspending the dark figures in space, or even the wind blowing the character into nothingness.

As a viewer we feel unnerved, determined to know what is causing these attacks, as they seem to tap into our collective fears and uncertainties. It is almost as if the very landscape itself is attacking those who inhabit it, with the landscapes continuing unchanged beyond the frame of his work; this sense of never-ending repetition creates an unsettling idea of our innermost thoughts.

// Simona CiobotariuJacques Lacan, a leader in post-Freudian psychoanalysis, first wrote of the ‘mirror-stage’ in the mid 1930s. He saw our early interactions with our reflective image as hugely significant in the development of our self-image. Anyone looking in a mirror, even if seeking to discover their true identity, discovers first of all a fixed image of them self. A persona to which they try to restore movement and life by a whole range of grimaces, facial gesticulations and minuscule gesture of defiance.

The same can be said of the photograph; every self-portrait is doubling, an image of the other. It is merely a single image of ourselves, capture in a fraction of a second, a single image that will never be recreated. Our simplest, most familiar experience of the photographic self-portrait is a constant reminder of the primordial fiction and the primal alienation of the first “mirror stage”. Doubt is cast over the child’s image even before he or she encounters other human beings, the contrast between the whole self seen and recognised in the mirror forms an unsettling contradiction to the uncoordinated and undeveloped body of the infant.

As we grow older the image in the mirror no longer offers evidence of a reassuring singularity but on the contrary, of a banal resemblance to the other. So banal, so “common”, that it ends up suppressing all difference, denying any distinction between the other and myself.

Simona Ciobotariu’s self-portraits play with this Lacanian notion of the mirror phase as well as the tradition of the photo-portrait. We are shown fragmented reflections of the artist, not the whole self that Lacan suggests, instead of being offered an image of the whole, the viewer is left it fill in the blanks.

// Solmaz TahvilzadehAbsence:Presence

Solmaz Tahvilzadeh’s series Absence:Presence was born out of the artists move to London. Leaving so much behind, Tahvilzadeh found herself “drowning in memories of the past”. Her work attempts to highlight this sense of loss, be through empty chairs or the gradual removal of the hijab, she speaks of being in the “undeniable presence of the absence”. It is the almost contradictory phrase that sparked this work, her longing for love, familiar sights and sounds that over time faded into her new life in England.

// PHOTOMONTH

// Ian Atkinson

// Mohsen Zarei-Kesheh

// Michele Clement-Delbos

// Spencer Rowell

// Victoria Kovalenko

// Emma Brennan

// Ceyda Nielsen

// Hannah Richardson

// Michele Cremona

// Mustafa Batibeniz

// Simona Ciobotariu

// Solmaz Tahvilzadeh

// Digby Washer

// Photomonth, Gallery East, Brick Lane, London, 4th-9th November 2010

// Katsuhito Noguchi