Award-winning photographic artist Tom Illsley presents his inaugural solo show ‘Meridian’, a development of the original project which was awarded the Nottingham Trent Universary Photography award in June 2015; our third 2015 student photography bursary award with Nottingham Trent University, comprised of £1000 of production services towards an exhibition of work one year after graduation.
Illsley’s series ‘Meridian’ is an exploration of central geographical locations within Great Britain and implies free liberal methods of enquiry such as the dérive – the notion of drifting around a landscape, traditionally an urban one. The dérive is a translation from the French meaning “drifting”, and it is this that Illsley has used as his approach to the environment he finds himself in. By taking flat linear objects in the form of maps and geographical co-ordinates, areas of the landscape known as centre points’ are intensively explored.
The areas of investigation for this exhibition include locations from the geographical centres of England, Scotland and Wales. The photographs highlight the landscape around these factual co-ordinates and explore whether these locations hold a deeper, contextual meaning rather than just being the subject of centrography – the mathematical method used to find the centre point of a chosen area of land.
The Meridian’ project initially investigated the geographic centre area surrounding Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, England. This collection was first presented in a group exhibition at Cobden Chambers, Nottingham, in 2015 as a part of the Fifth Wall Photo Festival, and was exhibited further at the 2015 Free Range shows at The Old Truman Brewery in London. Illsley was awarded the Genesis Imaging NTU Bursary Award in June 2015 at the Fifth Wall Photo Festival. He also received support from the Ordinance Survey, the United Kingdom’s geographical mapping agency and the organisation that conducted a recent investigation to identify geographical centre points’ throughout England using the centrography method.
Tom Illsley ‘Meridian’ at Lakeside Arts Centre
9 April – 15 May 2016
Lakeside Arts Centre,
University Park,
Nottingham,
NG7 2RD.
Exhibition preview: 7 April, 6 – 7.30pm.