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Indepth Arts News:
"Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize 2000"
2000-02-11 until 2000-03-25
Photographer's Gallery
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
The work of the artists shortlisted for The Citibank Private
Bank Photography Prize 2000 show photography to be at the
very heart of current artistic concerns. Remembered traumas,
the moment between life and death and strange sexuality;
these are just a few of the themes expressed in this exhibition
of some of the most significant contemporary artists working
with photography. The Prize, which has now been increased
to Ł15,000, celebrates contemporary photography on an
international level with artists from theUSA, Australia, Czech
Republic and UK.
Within the larger context of contemporary art, the five artists
shortlisted for The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize
2000 are exemplary in that each has demonstrated the ways
in which photography continues to be at the forefront of
dealing with current artistic preoccupations. -
Elizabeth Janus Anna Gaskell (USA) and Tracey Moffatt (Australia) both use
narrative as an important element in their work. Gaskell
borrows narratives; her critically acclaimed series override was
based on Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland. Her new body
of work by proxy, which is on display for the first time in
England as part of this exhibition, is based around the story of
the infamous Genene Jones, a real-life pediatric nurse from
Texas who was convicted of several murders in the early
1980s. Her nurse s white uniform is worn by girls of different
ages, performing mysterious tasks in a green summer
landscape with winter skies. Dark flowing hair, the mingled
limbs of adolescent girls and strange angles infuse Gaskellís
photographs with surreal suggestion and sexual tension.
Tracey Moffatts work references film, television and literary
sources and she frequently collapses distinctions between
documentary and fiction in her narrative series. Violence or its
threat is a recurring theme in her work. Scarred for Life II, her
most recent work, combines images and text to depict
disturbing and formative episodes - a child tied up in the
garden, verbal abuse and domestic violence. Also on display
is Laudanum, a series of black and white photogravures set
in a colonial mansion in the Victorian era. The unfolding story
focuses on the relationship between an Anglo-Saxon
mistress and her Asian servant girl. The psychosexual
tensions between them become emblematic of relations of
power, domination and colonialism.
Violence is more immediately apparent in the work Dead
Horse, a large-scale video projection of a horse caught at the
moment of death. Tim Macmillan (UK) used the Time-Slice
Camera which he invented in the 1980s to produce this
extraordinary work. The shock of the bullet entering the
horse s skull leaves it suspended in mid-air, its legs in motion
as though cantering. Dead Horse is an uncanny take on the
great British tradition of animal portraiture. By using his
Time-Slice Camera, Macmillan, who has also applied this
technique to advertising work, freezes a moment in time and
views it from numerous different angles, exploring the subject
in a way which relates to photography, animation and
sculpture. Jitka Hanzlovás (Czech Republic) series of
photographs, Rokytník, documents her return to her
childhood village in the Czech Republic after years of exile.
Hanzlov· chronicles the community through landscapes,
portraits and interiors. Her painterly compositions and vivid
colours have a melancholic and symbolic effect which create
an intimate record of a life remembered. Distance enables
Hanzlová to look at her village in a new way and she frequently
photographs the more unexpected activities of its inhabitants:
two boys crawling along a wet road, someone asleep in a
ditch, a young girl dancing with a goat, a prostrate pig which
could be asleep or dead. Images from a further body of work,
bewohner, are also included in the exhibition.
James Caseberes (USA) interior locations are in fact table-top
architectural models made from Styrofoam and plaster.
Phantasmatic spaces, his dream-like hallways, tunnels and
cells are all devoid of people, yet hint at traces of human
presence. His more recent works such as Flooded Hallway
(1998), delve into the subterranean spaces of Roman baths
and sewers filling the barren architectural spaces with
combinations of light and water. Cool and intimate, his works
are a meditation on loneliness and solitude, on public and
private spaces.
The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize rewards the
individual judged to have made the most significant
contribution to the medium of photography over the past year.
The Prize, which is now worth Ł15,000, was established in
1996 and is considered to be one of the leading international
photography awards. Previous winners have been Richard
Billingham (1997), Andreas Gursky (1998) and Rineke Dijkstra
(1999).
The judges for this year are: Olivier Richon, Course Director of
Photography, Royal College of Art; Michael Mack,
independent curator; Hripsime Visser, Photography Curator,
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Val Williams, Curator,
Hasselblad Center, Göteborg.
The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize is supported by
The Times
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