Please vote for me to become the official blogger / artist for an expedition to the North Pole!Image: Greenland iceberg, © Margaret Sharrow 2008
All images this site copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008-2010, unless otherwise noted
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Friday, 17 December 2010
Margaret Sharrow
Please vote for me to become the official blogger / artist for an expedition to the North Pole!Image: Lampeter lantern festival, © Margaret Sharrow 2010
All images this site copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008-2010, unless otherwise noted
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Margaret Sharrow
Image: Guggenheim intervention (exterior), © Margaret Sharrow 2010
All images this site copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008-2010, unless otherwise noted
Greenland blog 02: How my art took me to Greenland, and a Danish tongue twister
Parting clouds, west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008
I mentioned yesterday about the grant that allowed me to travel to Greenland, generously provided by the University of Wales, on condition that I was engaged in some sort of creative project (drama, cinema, creative writing, or in this case, fine art) with a further outcome to enhance my educational experience. I was at the time pursuing a BA at the Aberystwyth University School of Art, having hurried straight into the second year and begun experimenting with alternative photographic processes. This means that although I started out making some digital work, my main focus was in the darkroom, first doing traditional prints, and gradually moving into different techniques and chemical processes until it became photography, Jim, but not as we know it. By the end of the year I was cheerfully pouring bleach over multiple-exposure prints then wailing when I discovered that Sigmar Polke had already done exactly the same thing in 1971. To cap it all I’d been awarded a massive travel scholarship, which made for an interesting summer. After I finished marking a million media studies A level papers I had flown straight into preparations: daily study of Danish, in hopes of being able to speak Greenland’s colonial language, if not Greenlandic itself, which is difficult to find recordings for the essential comic attempts at mimicry. Now Danish can be difficult for the English speaker because of its range of guttural sounds produced at the back of the palette. Though Danish is reasonably similar to English in terms of word order, linguistic roots, etc., and I’d spent hours making vocabulary flashcards in my favourite cafe, I found that when confronted with actual Greenlanders speaking their colonial tongue I had my usual reaction - I froze (metaphorically, as it was still summer) and forgot everything I’d ever learned. There was one exception - I was able to amuse people by reciting the never-to-be-forgotten tongue twister taught to me years ago in Toronto by a Danish-Canadian friend. It employed a string of the guttural sounds, and provided guaranteed hilarity, by dint of my pronunciation: rød grød med flød på - which is red pudding with cream, as I remember.
Somehow I have diverged onto Danish tongue twisters and puddings, which throws up the whole question of Greenland’s relationship to Denmark. But more political thinking would leave us both up in the air, ignoring the spectacular views unfolding out the window of the descending plane. I can assure you unreservedly that at the time I took the photograph shown here, I was as fully present as I have ever been in my life, allowing for the fact that a certain detachment is inevitable when taking photographs at a furious rate. By the time we landed I was convinced that if I never took another picture over the next three weeks, I would still have enough material for an exhibition. The land was chiseled out of the green-blue sea, its elaphantine wrinkles washed with rusty red. And here I must say something about the colours I experienced, and have passed on to you. As with all my digital photos from this trip, I have made no alterations to saturation, contrast, density, etc., avoiding the current fashion in advertising and on Flickr for playing with these mechanics in Photoshop, producing supersaturated landscapes that anyone who has been to the place will recognise as overhyped, and setting up anyone who has not been for disappointment. Suffice it to say that with my photographs, as far as colour goes, what you see is what you get. Unless of course I have rendered the whole scene blue, by printing it as a cyanotype...
26 August 2008 09:32 (Greenlandic time) recalled 6 January 2011
Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166
then lope over to my Greenland blog http://margaretsharrowgreenland.blogspot.com/
and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!
archive of Greenland stories
Margaret Sharrow at St Dogmaels Gallery Winter Show
Image: Still from the video 'Soul group' by Margaret Sharrow at St Dogmaels Gallery, image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2010
Margaret Sharrow is showing a selection of photographic and video work as part of the 'Winter Show' at St Dogmaels Gallery in Pembrokeshire.
It is the premiere of her video 'Soul group', installed in the new video viewing room.
There is also a chance to view some of Sharrow's cyanotypes of Greenland, and current work from her series of digital prints and collages 'Walking London / Walking Wales'.
St Dogmaels Gallery is on the High Street of St Dogmaels, a few miles from Cardigan on the road to Poppit Sands. Opening hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 12 to 6pm.
The 'Winter Show' continues until February 2011.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Gwasg Oriel Press publishes Qaqortoq by Margaret Sharrow
Icebergs and fjords. Helicopters and harbours old and new. Shopping and rain. Iron athletes and tender portraits of families carved in wood. All images of Qaqortoq, southwest Greenland's largest town, in this new publication, Qaqortoq by Margaret Sharrow, now available at Gwasg Oriel Press. 'A feast for all the senses.'
Monday, 12 April 2010
See the photographic starstuff while you can: Aberration, Proud Gallery, London until 15 April
Aberration opening, London, 3 April. All photos this page copyright Margaret Sharrow 2010
Aberration
an exhibition of photography by staff, students and graduates of Aberystwyth University School of Art
Proud Central Gallery
32 John Adam Street
London
Until 15 April 2010
There's still time to catch this nifty little show, tucked away near London's National Gallery. Like baby stars in a nebula cluster, you can see the starstuff of the art school environment from whence I came... Everyone has developed their work further since I last saw them. Let's just say that the Aber Uni degree show this June promises to be an exciting and innovative event, if this show is anything to go by.
Directions to Proud Central Gallery
The closest tube station is Charing Cross. But I will begin my directions from the National Gallery, which would be nice to visit before or after Aberration.
Coming out of the front entrance of the National Gallery, bear left around Trafalgar Square and left again when you come to the Strand at Waterstones bookshop. Keep on the same side of the Strand as Waterstones, pass the entrance to Charing Cross station then turn right and find yourself in a little network of streets. John Adam Street is the first street running parallel to the Strand - turn left onto it, and the Proud Gallery is on the left. (Unless of course, you have carried along the Strand too far - Zimbabwe House is too far - in which case turn right on John Adam Street and look right. The good news is that the street isn't very long, so even I couldn't be wandering around for long.)
Apparently the post-event partying went on long after I sloped off to late opening at the Tate!
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Shrouded Forms: current work by Margaret Sharrow at Town Hall Café Deli, April 1-30
'Shrouded iron (face)', Margaret Sharrow, mixed media, 2010. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow 2010
'Shrouded Forms', a photographic/mixed media exhibition of current work by artist Margaret Sharrow, will open Thursday 1 April at the Town Hall Café Deli, Lampeter, Wales and runs throughout the month of April.
The exhibition will be celebrate by a gala event on Saturday 10 April, 11 am - 3 pm, when there will be a special showing of 'Shrouded car (bird)' in the archway between the cafe and Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre, in addition to the exhibition inside the café.
The exhibition is open Monday to Saturday, 8 am to 5 pm.
Margaret Sharrow is a graduate of Aberystwyth University's School of Art and has exhibited at St Dogmaels Gallery, @ the Gallery in Rhayader, Erwood Station Craft Centre and Gallery and other venues in Wales. Her work uses alternative photographic processes and mixed media in an attempt to express the ineffable.
Town Hall Café Deli is located on Lampeter's High Street near the main bus stops, just off the A485 between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth. (See map)
For more information contact sharrow.art@hotmail.co.uk
Further images to follow on this site after 10 April... or sooner, perhaps.
Feel free to copy, print, distribute or post the promotional postcard / mini poster!
Looking forward to Aberration opening, Proud Central Gallery, Sat 3 April, 5pm
Aberration, a photographic exhibition featuring artists from Aberystwyth University, opens at London's Proud Central Gallery at 5pm on Saturday 3 April and runs until 15 April.
Aberystwyth University School of Art's photographic department boasts staff, students and graduates working in a wide variety of approaches, from digital to traditional black and white to alternative processes and mixed media. This exhibition, curated by current postgraduate Faye Griffiths, showcases this diversity of talent.
I can't wait to see it all come together at the opening!
Proud Central Gallery is located at 32 John Adams Street, London, two minutes' walk from Charing Cross Station.
The opening is from 5 to 7 pm on Saturday 3 April, and the show continues until Thursday 15 April.
Monday, 22 February 2010
Margaret Sharrow exhibiting April 2010 at Town Hall Cafe, Lampeter, Wales
Catch the sun at the upbeat venue of Lampeter's Town Hall Cafe. Photo copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2010
Come and see the work, have a fresh ground coffee or sandwich, enjoy the sun streaming through the huge south-facing windows, or wait eagerly for the specials to go up on the board (from 12 noon).
The exhibition is open Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm, and Saturday 9am to 5pm, throughout April 2010.
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Review: Obama's People by Nadav Kander at Birmingham
Eugene Kang by Nadav Kander, courtesy of
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/2009-inauguration-gallery/index.html
I must confess I had always had a certain, completely unfounded, prejudice against Birmingham. It lacked the centrality and culture of London; the hip style of Manchester; the artistic excitement of Glasgow; the architecture of Edinburgh. Although years ago I had been assured that Birmingham has more miles of canals than Venice, and I was willing to believe it to be true, the comparison seemed almost obscene. My acquaintanceship with the city, limited heretofore to inevitable forays at the Digbeth Street Coach Station, had hardly provided me with any basis for analysis. So having occasion to purchase a day return to Brum to escort my father partway on his return to Gatwick, I found myself with the prospect of spending at least two hours in the city while waiting for the return train. It seemed churlish not to go for a walk.
The central rail station seems to automatically spit you out onto a walkway that goes past McDonald's (free, clean toilets! unlike the station, which charges 20p to spend a penny), and there, ahead of you just to the left, is a funky little glass building that hands out free maps and other tourist info. Turn left here and an easy walk past a couple blocks of pedestrianised shopping (including Habitat on your left) brings you to an open square with a sort of concrete amphitheatre that is a pleasant place to people watch on a hot summer's day, while munching a sandwich. A classically columned portico announces some sort of municipal government offices; around the corner from this is the city museum and art gallery. On the way I encountered a giant poster advertising an exhibition called 'Obama's People', featuring the photographs of Nadav Kander, normally a fashion rather than portrait photographer.
And the portraits did certainly echo shots for the cover of Vogue, a plain white background and ring flash giving a very even brightness to the subjects, who were nonetheless rendered in rich saturation and detail, so important when photographing people of a range of races and skin tones. (One of my pet peeves has always been that the emulsions and standard developing settings of films, especially colour films like Kodak but more dramatically perhaps in black and white, have traditionally been set to flatter the skin tones of Caucasians, leaving Afro-Carribeans, South Asians, etc. unflatteringly underexposed, and thus almost invisible in group portraits.)
But Kander's work renders the skin tones beautifully, and is about group portraiture only in its totality: what he has done is to record the members of Obama's cabinet and staff, as they were known at the time of his inauguration in January 2009. Each portrait confronts the viewer with a single member of staff; it is apparent immediately the range of age, gender and ethnic diversity that characterise the support team chosen by America's first black president. In addition, although the forty-odd less central people are presented in rows of head and shoulder shots, 16"x20" approximately, the twenty-five or so key advisors are presented in fabulous head-to-toe nearly life size enlargements, or in some cases, in larger-than-life waist shots. This is the case with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who is presented in a pose reminiscent of portraits in oils, with the exception of the animation of her mouth, in mid-speech. Facial lines and age spots, that are considered 'characterful' in men, but are airbrushed and botoxed away in women, are allowed to remain, giving her dignity and authority - after all, it is hard to forget that she also had a very real chance of becoming president, despite remarks about her weight and appearance that would never have been an issue with a male candidate of similar age and stature.
With many of the other portraits, too, the interest is more in the analysis of who is represented, and how, rather than in the technicalities of the production. Kander claims to have allowed the subjects to dress as they wished, and to bring their own props, if desired: these ranged from pencils to a basketball to chocolate chip cookies. In the absence of any setting, the clothes, props, and particularly the postures, gestures, and facial expressions define the characters of these people. Reggie Love, Personal Aide to the President, featured on the promotional materials, upon closer inspection reveals his name stitched into the lining of his tailored jacket, and even the cuffs of his shirt. Ostentatious, or relaxed, confident and proud? The much-discussed Eugene Kang could not form a more complete contrast: retiring behind the little black book of contact numbers that helps him to be Obama's living personal organiser, only 24, this former student politician sports a collegiate wool scarf that, while slightly eccentric, is as self-effacing worn over a dark coat as Love's peacock-blue satin shirt is eye-catching and extrovert.
As a total exhibition, it makes manifest, in a purely visual and immediate way, the revolution of inclusiveness at the highest level of government that Obama has instigated before his first day in the Oval Office. And yet, clearly some of the old guard remain, and continuity is not necessarily a bad thing. Particularly striking is Mark W. Lippert, National Security Council Chief of Staff, whose deep shadows under the eyes and premature aged looks at 35 speak perhaps of the burden of intolerable knowledge.
Obama himself is presented differently. Secreted in a sort of shrine, facing night time portraits of the Capitol buildings, his print is the smallest of all, a mere 12 by 14 inches (approximately, as I remember). It is black and white, with a large predominance of grey tones, and is lit by a single miniscule bulb. From the night of the dark enclosure, he seems to look up to the dawn he hopes for his country and the world.
AS I WRITE IT, THAT IS SO CLICHE! But in the exhibition, it didn't seem so.
The remainder of the museum and gallery took a while to explore. Of particular interest, and relevant as both contrast and parallel, is the room devoted to Olaudah Equiano. The story of his life, from beginnings as a slave to free man, writer and thinker, is an inspiring antecedent to Obama's. And both have published influential books: Equiano's is titled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) and helped to forward the anti-slavery campaign.
Please vote for me to become the official blogger / artist for an expedition to the North Pole!
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Back in time: a trip to Lacock Abbey
Touring Lacock Abbey, copyright Margaret Sharrow 2009
A motley crew of photographers and art historians from Aberystwyth University's School of Art took a coach trip yesterday to visit the Lacock Abbey and William Henry Fox Talbot Museum.
It was a lovely hazy warm day and we had a tour of the abbey, as well as a chance to see the museum and wander the village's historic streets.
The outing was part of Chris Webster's course, History of Photography Part 1: Themes and Processes 1840-1940, or HOP1 for short.
William Henry Fox Talbot was a pioneer in the development of photography, and produced the first photographic negative that could be reproduced as a positive image.
View of Lacock Abbey, copyright Margaret Sharrow 2009
More information about Lacock Abbey:
Lacock Abbey is a National Trust property.
One of Fox Talbot's early negatives, which he called a photogenic drawing negative, was of Lacock Abbey. He used the abbey and the grounds as settings for many of his photographs.
Two of the Harry Potter films used Lacock Abbey as a setting for Hogwarts, and it has also appeared in other film and television productions.
Inevitably, Wikipedia discourses on Lacock Abbey, particularly about its film/TV connections.
welcome page ----- Margaret's webpage ----- Facebook ----- Flickr ----- Saatchi Online
Friday, 9 January 2009
Alice Farnworth: through the pinhole
Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2008
It's easy to forget if you are an undergraduate, but we do have postgraduate students at the Aberystwyth University School of Art. These people are most often found squirrelled away down the overheated M.A. corridor, with its walls of steam pipes and mysterious sliding green doors. Even more mysterious are the Ph.D. students, their painting spaces in a secretive annexe that for a long time I had assumed was a storage area for boards. But these postgraduate creatures are, like the faeries and woodsprites, in our midst, if generally unacknowledged. They may be the friendly helpful Technician who just cut your copper plate or sorted out your Photoshop disaster. They may have been sitting in at your January assessment. A few might even have a workspace near you, in the otherwise undergraduate studios. Alice Farnworth is one such M.A. photography student. Not only does she not bite, she produces interesting work.
Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2008
Using pinhole photography, she has been producing an extended series of self-portraits with an element of the mysterious. In particular, she has been exploring the use of mirrors to produce double self portraits. These doppelganger images are, at their best, unsettling, because they do not seem to represent the old trope of woman-regarding-herself-in-mirror. Instead they seem to suggest a second self, an inner self, a secret sharer, an unwanted alternate self crawling from the subconscious.
Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2008
On a practical level, it is interesting to note that she says that her friends claim always to be able to tell which image is 'really her' and which is the reflection. A task that may prove more difficult as her sister apparently closely resembles her - yes, she has tried double familial portraits but found them less satisfying.
Every time I see her (or check the clotheslines outside the darkroom where prints dry) she seems to have produced another set of 6-8 images from another self-sitting. 'I'm looking for the one image in the series that stands out, that says something different,' she says. One day I found her fretting about a set of pictures where she discovered that a reminder to herself that she had written on her hand was clearly visible in the prints. Bizarre, indeed. That, I thought, is your different image.
William Blake, The Soul Hovering over the Body Reluctantly Parting with Life circa 1805, Tate Collection
Last week's offering produced an outstanding series of the double portraits suggestive of the soul leaving the body, reminiscent of an image of this produced by William Blake. I'm still waiting for a copy of one of this new series to post here. Do check back to this page - it's worth waiting for.
And here it is!
Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2009
welcome page ----- Margaret's webpage ----- Facebook ----- Flickr ----- Saatchi Online
Alice Farnworth, colour print, 2009
welcome page ----- Margaret's webpage ----- Facebook ----- Flickr ----- Saatchi Online
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