The New Photographer's Gallery and Other Exhibitions

I've been meaning to post for a while now, but I've just been so busy lately; buying a house, wedding planning, seeing family etc.

I've recently (and by recently I mean in the past month or so) visited The Photographer's Gallery to see the Burtynsky:Oil exhibtion and The Turner Gallery (which luckily for me is right on my doorstep) to see the new Tracey Emin exhibition - She Lay Down Deep Beneath The Sea. 

As always, I was impressed by The Photographer's Gallery and it looks great after it's make over. The work by Burtynsky - all large format, was awe inspiring. It really makes you question our dependence on oil, and what will happen when it runs out. The images of the Californian oil fields are amazing. I think work like this really brings out the ignorance people have about where we get our day to day resources from. 

"In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by the discovery of oil…”

   - Edward Burtynsky

 

 A lot of the time I spend longer in the bookshop than I do looking at the work. I could spend hours looking at all of the different publications, this time I came away with the latest issue of Hotshoe magazine and a book 'Tom Hunter - Living in Hell and Other Stories'. He has got to be in my top 5 Uk photographers. I his Vermeer influenced photographs. 

Tracey Emin's She Lay Deep Beneath The Sea was (in my opinion) fairly disappointing. I was talking to a friend last night about how she is an artist that you seem to love or hate. Which of course is good that she has that effect on people, rather than people just having an opinion of indifference about her work.  Some of the pieces were beautiful like her emborideries on calico, but others were predictable and much of the same. Overall, I would definitely say it is worth a visit, if not just to see Margate and where she spent much of her life. 

Last night I went to my best friend's degree show 'seen UNseen' at The Pie Factory in Margate. Some of the work was great. Ellie's work 'Home' was particularly beautiful and is also part of a book 'Milieu' alongside four other artists. There are still copies left to buy, which you can get here (it's only £5). The exhibition is open until 26th June and is just a two minute walk from The Turner Gallery. It's definitely worth a look!