29 September 2016
The first Spin event of the new season will be at Stills Gallery, where we will be visiting the exhibition of work by photographer Jo Spence. We will be joined by Roberta McGrath to discuss the various themes of the work on display. Roberta is Associate Lecturer in Photographic Theory and Criticism at Edinburgh Napier University and has close links with Stills Gallery.
Jo Spence (1934-1992) was a British documentary photographer and writer. She typically worked in collaboration, using her camera to address issues such as class, family, sexuality, illness and death. This exhibition presents material from a range of projects on which Spence worked from the early 1970s onwards. These include stark self-portraits, politically-motivated photographs of children, and work by the group Polysnappers, which Spence formed with fellow students at the Polytechnic of Central London in the 1980s. This exhibition reveals the personal and political import of photography as a medium.
19 September 2007 at 6.30pm
Dani Marti’s practice is stimulated by what we perceive as challenges within the act of portrayal. He is fascinated by what lies behind the surface of the subject as an essence to be grasped or sought after through attempting to represent it. The dialectic between the possibility and simultaneous hopelessness of this endeavour emerges in the abstraction of large-scale woven works, and videos that borrow from the language of documentary.
For Marti, both weaving and (video) taping represent an act of bondage, a ritual which enables the artist to possess the person that is portrayed. The works become representational, not only of states of feelings, but also of regimes of class and power, and the idiosyncrasies of personal psychosexualities.
Dani Marti studied fine art in Sydney, gaining a Master of Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, in 2000; and in Glasgow, gaining a MFA at the GSA, in 2006.
He will be joining us to talk about his work.
