exhibition

Skip Intro MA 2008 degree show

Artists Steve Sabella, Frank Dabba Smith, Su Fahy, Sam Rowelsky, Mimi Winter, Ilona Jurgiel, Liam Sinnott, Georgios Anastasakis, Andrea Jaeger, Miguel Angel Fonta, Krisztina Fazekas, Rachel Cunningham, Selina Shah, Roger Mavity

05.Sep.08 - 09.Sep.08
11-8

Private View, 04.Sep.08, 6-9 p.m.

University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5LS
020 7911 5000 / 020 7911 5858
cav-admissions@wmin.ac.uk
www.2008maps.com
Tube Baker Street, Marylebone

The University of Westminster proudly announces the independently curated graduate exhibition of the Master of Arts of Photographic Studies course for 2008. Skip Intro boasts a striking variety of provoking images. The fifteen participating photographers come from ten different nations, but this internationalism does not fully explain the extraordinary and stimulating diversity of their technically and visually innovative work.

This exhibition brings together an astonishing range of subject material to explore contemporary debates about time, space and identity. What makes the show exceptional is the professionalism of the work, its often disruptive character and the range of eloquent and individual visual languages, rather than a uniform institutional style. It is a testament to the strength of the MA in Photographic Studies, widely recognised as one of the best in the UK, as well as to the talents of the hotographers themselves.

Frank Dabba Smith, an American Rabbi now living in London, shows a sensitive series of images of his children on their daily school run, exploring their subtle mood shifts from day to day.

The intimacy of these shots starkly contrasts the work of Palestinian photographer Steve Sabella, whose startling and ambivalent photographic constructions examine the state of mind of living in permanent 'mental exile'.

Rachel Cunninghams images reflect on the contrasts between the Jerusalem as a mythical landscape and the reality of a city fragmented, while Mimi Winters photographs explore the physical and spiritual aftermath of occupied military space with an otherworldly deserted landscape.

Selina Shahs book and video describe an intimate journey through cyberspace, visualizing unspoken desires and exploring limitless fantasies in her impression of a post-bodied and hyper-real world, whilst Krisztina Fazekas uses biblical stories as a starting point for expressing the curious ambivalence that characterises the attachment between men and women and Sonja Wilsons conceptual self-portraiture explores the relationship between disability and personal identity.

Sam Rowelsky looks, literally, into peoples homes at night, investigating the nature of voyeurism while studying the sociocultural meanings that emanate from different types of houses. Su Fahy, in contrast, evokes the past in an elegiac series of images that muse on past histories, past lives, and their connections to nature and culture.

Andrea Jaegers misty images show little yet reveal much – their deliberate lack of visual clarity on the surface intensifies the viewers need to find new layers of meaning beneath the surface. Roger Mavitys stylised yet surreal images use the metaphor of mannequins, confusingly intermingled with real people, to interrogate the paradoxical confusion between what is real and what is not.

Liam Sinnotts night-time urban scenes, with a strong hint of fantasy, simultaneously convey powerful vibrations of the playful and the sinister. Yiorgos Anastasakis also shows a series of scenes of the city at night but with a very different sensibility. In these elegantly composed images, the city becomes a living theatre where excitement and threat are interwoven.

Ilona Jurgiels wistful photographs use intimate domestic detail to study notions of memory and retrospection in a style that is, at once, melancholic, emotional and affectionate. In a very different vein, Miguel Angel Fonta uses portraits of London bus drivers to look back into their widely varied ethnic and social histories, in contrast to their shared way of work today.