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Indepth Arts News:
"New Work form Jem Southam"
2003-10-15 until 2003-11-15
Hirschl Contemporary Art
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Jem Southam is one of the key figures in British photography of the last twenty years. Southam was shortlisted for the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2001 alongside Roni Horn, Hellen van Meene and Boris Mikhailov, and is the winner of several international awards. His work is in numerous collections including the V&A, the British Council and the Government Art Collection. Jem Southam’s photographs of the natural world capture the landscape in a continual state of flux. His work catalogues the effects of time, climate and man on the land.
Southam returns repeatedly over months or years to the same carefully selected sites, painstakingly creating a frame by frame record of the patterns of change. Southam uses a large 10" by 8" camera meaning that the work can be reproduced on a relatively large scale, with particular sharply focused detail. All the work in the exhibition is from the South and South West of England, the West coast of Scotland and the Dutch polders. All the work in the show is new and previously unseen.
During the 1980s Southam helped to transform established photographic views and traditions with a colour imagery that expressed a new critical awareness of the medium and a desire to break with the past. Drawing on a wide range of ideas and influences, particularly from Germany and the US, Southam’s work was part of a new internationalism in British photography.
Since 1981 Southam’s photographic work has developed through five main series, Bristol City Docks (1977-84), Paintings of West Cornwall (1982-86), The Red River (1982-87), The Raft of Carrots (1992) and The Shape of Time: Rockfalls Rivermouths and Ponds (2000). He has also produced three highly acclaimed books; The Red River, Rockfalls Rivermouths Ponds, and The Raft of Carrots.
IMAGE
Jem Southam
From the Dutch Polder Series, 2003
C-Print,
36 by 48 inches,
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