Genesis is delighted to once again support Photo50 at London Art Fair; an annual exhibition of contemporary photography which provides a critical forum for examining some of the most distinctive elements of current photographic practice. The 2022 edition of the fair is curated by Rodrigo Orrantia and will be supported by our Exhibition Printing and Installation Services.
‘No Place is An Island’ Photo50, curated by Rodrigo Orrantia, at London Art Fair
The latest edition of Photo50, No Place is An Island presents works by British and UK-based artists responding to the idea of an island. Echoing John Donne’s celebrated book No Man is an Island, the exhibition explores what it means to be an island and its multiple possibilities towards the future.
The title of the exhibition also alludes to the idea that contemporary photography is not an island or an isolated medium. The selected artists will showcase photography as part of a wider practice, pushing and redefining its boundaries through sculpture, performance, moving image and sound.
This exhibition also celebrates 10 years since the seminal Photo50 show entitled The New Alchemists, curated by Rodrigo’s mentor and friend Sue Steward, who passed away in 2017. No Place Is An Island references Steward’s work and ideas, bringing them to the present by looking at how photographic art has evolved in the last decade. The exhibition connects a generation of established and mid-career artists, with emerging practices working around the same interests and, in most cases, directly inspired by artists in the show.
Curator Rodrigo Orratoria said: “The works in this show connect with the topical issues of our time, but also to a universal narrative, the journey to an idealised place. I’d like to start conversations about what it means to be an island, and how we construct it in our minds. No Place Is An Island talks about connectivity, about the fact nothing exists in isolation, it is merely a fiction, a fantasy.”
No Place is an Island Artists
John Maclean
Eva Stenram
Dafna Talmor
Martin Seeds
Tom Hunter
Tom Lovelace
Andy Sewell
Aliki Braine
Esther Teichmann
Bindi Vora
Shepherd Manyika
Alexander Mourant
Sarah Pickering
Hannah Hughes
About Rodrigo Orrantia
Rodrigo Orrantia is an independent curator, interested in expanded practices of photography also working with sculpture, performance and localised installation. Orrantia believes that exhibitions and publications are devices for experimentation and debate, where curators can work with artists from the outset of the project in a collaborative way.
He is particularly interested in the connections between photography, geography and place, especially the topical relationship between nature and humans in the geologic time of the Anthropocene. Following this interest, in 2017 he was awarded Format Festival’s Habitat Award for an exhibition project entitled
Modern Ornithologies, an experimental installation featuring a selection of photo books and films placed within the collection of Pickford’s House Museum in Derby. In 2020 he was the winner of the Landskrona Foto Festival Open Call, with an exhibition project entitled The State of Things, another experimental installation, this time inviting five artists to respond to the architecture and history of this Swedish town.
Orrantia believes that contemporary photographic practices interested in the materiality of the medium could also be interested in its history, and certainly in its many adjacent worlds, from printmaking through to sculpture, film and video, and live performance.
London Art Fair 2022
New dates: Wednesday 20 – Sunday 24 April 2022
Business Design Centre
52 Upper Street
Islington
London
N1 0QH
More from the blog
