Michael Corridore and London’s New Photography Fair
The ambitious upcoming international photography fair, Photo London, has attracted a lot of attention.
By Libby Russell
Michael Corridore - Transient, The think line we walk
The ambitious upcoming international photography fair, Photo London, has attracted a lot of attention. According to co-director of the fair, Michael Benson it aspires to be “The best photography fair in the world - bar none.” Proposing to mirror the impact of Frieze, it aims to transform London’s photography audience, to attract people less likely to attend a photography fair, in a climate where, Benson believes, photography is finally being noticed after previous years of it’s significance being underappreciated. With all the hype, it has a lot to live up to and it’s set to meet expectations with exhibiting artists like Michael Corridore working recently with Galerie Pavlova.
Angry Black Snake (2004-2012) is perhaps Corridore’s most recognised work in recent years. The photography series shows people fighting through clouds of sand and dust, shielding their eyes. Without context the viewer could assume something very different from what was being documented; audiences of outdoor events like racing. These scenes instead seem dystopian and post-apocalyptic. This work inverts the gaze and focuses on the spectator rather then what they’re watching, perhaps reappropriating them as objects, which in turn implicates viewers of the work themselves in the same contemplation.
Michael Corridore - Transient, The think line we walk
Earlier this year Corridore exhibited in Frühlings Salon, Galerie Pavlova and now is back exhibiting at Photo London 2015 with the work ‘Transient - The thin line we walk’, an experimental photo series presenting abstracted images of densely populated urban landscapes from an elevated viewpoint. This is a stark shift from his previous focus on deserted and barren areas but it brings us back to peoples collision with their environment. It presents to the audience the issue of ‘humans’ indiscriminate imprint’, making us confront our impact on our environment, illustrating our negligence and imposed ownership upon it. The act of creating the final image has involved many steps of abstracting the original photo. This process of distancing and simplifying questions, Does a photograph become less a documentation of a moment as it becomes less recognizable?
The widely anticipated Photo London is held at Somerset House from 21-24 May 2015. With talk of selfie stick aerobics classes over at Tate Modern, this fair promises to be as focused on the worth of concept driven photography as much as selling work, keeping up with evolving contemporary institutional practices and inviting in new and curious audiences.
Stroke Art Fair 2015
The Praterinsel, a semi-island in Munich’s Isar river hosted the annual Stroke Art Fair for the third time this month.
The Praterinsel, a semi-island in Munich’s Isar river hosted the annual Stroke Art Fair for the third time this month.
Photo from Stroke Art Fair website
Founded by Marco and Raiko Schwab in 2009, the fair seeks to support and showcase young artists and galleries and present them with an opportunity to enter the art market by keeping the fees to a minimum. To brothers Marco and Raiko it is all about the idea of art without boundaries and notions of elitism. Stroke Art Fair shares their vision of art, design and urban life in the 21st century with participating galleries and art spaces from Germany as well as Holland, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
Since its inception, Stroke has attracted over 100,000 visitors, making the fair one of the top 5 art fairs in Germany for attendance. The fair offer a good mix by giving space to urban as well as contemporary art galleries such as Jealous Gallery from London and 44309 Street Art Gallery from Dortmund, independent art projects, art collectives, publishers, fashion and furniture designers, graphic design and print companies, and individual artists for live painting and experimental art.
Photos by Heike Dempster
Despite a lot of rain, visitors flocked to Praterinsel for art, good company, food and drinks. Works that stood out were Berlin artists Herakut, Munich photographer Andrea Peipe, Telmo & Miel from the Netherlands with their “Glove Stories,” Mad C’s abtract pieces in watercolor, acrylic and spray paint, Anton Hoeger, Jakob Tory Bardon, Brigitte Yoshiko Pruchnow’s rainy canvases as well as Seungyea Park and Stefan Zsaitsits as part of a project by Størpunkt, a contemporary art gallery in Munich.
Australian artist Rone and Heike in rainy Munich for the Stroke Art Fair 2015
Seungyea Park’s portraits are tend to be scary and surreal as the artist uses deformities, additional eyes or limbs or animal heads to explore feat as well as the divide between our inner and outer selves. Stefan Zsaitsits’s pieces exist in a space between illustration and caricature, pointing to the depth of the human psyche and mirroring the human soul.
The ever-popular live-painting section, also adjusted due to the weather, featured, amongst others, Australian artist Rone as well as Soenke Bush, Anna Traut and Mittenimwald.