#71: Offline Journal Newsletter : 13 June '24
Exhibition openings update
Hello again
Here’s another short Newsletter to remind you of a few photography events this week coming up around Wales that may interest you.
Again, please note the long list of photography exhibitions and events running now and in the coming months via the button below or via the dedicated Exhibitions page I regularly update for Offline Journal Newsletter subscribers to read and share.
Brian
A ROYAL WEDDING IN NEWPORT
6pm this Saturday 15 June will see the opening of Ian Walker’s A Royal Wedding in Newport, fittingly, on the walls of Ffoto Newport in the city centre’s Newport Arcade.
The exhibition presents a selection from Walker’s unique series of images made around Newport in south Wales leading up to the marriage of Charles and Diana on Wednesday 29 July 1981. The work was also selected for publication as a limited edition title by Café Royal Books in 2018.
Ian Walker also penned the latest Offline Essay (the seventh in the series) titled ‘Bargoed’ to Bargoed which Offline Journal Subscriber+ supporters received as a supplement alongside their copy of issue #012 of the Journal.
You will find examples of Walker’s photoworks and expert writing on photography on his website www.ianwalkerphoto.com
A ROYAL WEDDING IN NEWPORT
Ian Walker
6 -8pm, Saturday 15 June 2024
Ffoto Newport, Newport NP20 1GD
www.ffotonewport.com
HOME: IN ANOTHER LAND
After its showings in Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Oriel Colwyn, FOUND Gallery and the Wales Millennium Centre, Glenn Edwards’ HOME: IN ANOTHER LAND will open with a Private View in the Newport Museum and Art Gallery on Friday 21st June.
Alongside the exhibition, Edwards will also be screening a digital slideshow titled Africa: Against All Odds (Plus) – presenting a wider selection of Edwards’ Africa work made during his many trips to the continent over his career thus far.
HOME: IN ANOTHER LAND
Glenn Edwards
22 June - 14 September 2024
(Private View Friday 21st June 6.30pm - 8.30pm. Invite only).
Message @glennedwardsphotoj to be added to guest list.
Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Newport NP20 1PA
www.newport.gov.uk
TALK-PHOTO @ ORIEL COLWYN
Oriel Colwyn’s next TALK-PHOTO guest talk on photography will be Wednesday 19 June with respected photographer JANINE WIEDEL.
With a career spanning 50 years, Wiedel’s work has, rightly, been resurfaced and celebrated in recent months with the publication of her impressive VULCAN’S FORGE, published by Bluecoat Press.
TALK_PHOTO events are free to attend but tickets are required for the limited seating in the gallery space. More info and link to book a free ticket for the Janine Wiedel (and Carolyn Mendelsohn on 5 July) talk are available using the following link:
Offline Journal - latest issue #012
There are now a limited number of copies of the latest Offline Journal issue #012 remaining.
At 44 pages this is the biggest issue in Offline’s six years of publication and it’s packed with images and articles diving deep in photographers making a living from creative commercial portraiture.
Get a copy of the new issue using the button below!
If you’d prefer to secure the next two issues of Offline Journal, there are two Subscription options available - with or without the limited edition printed Supplements.
Subscribers are crucial in helping me realise future issues of Offline, the printed Supplements and celebrate the diverse photography talent we have in Wales! And both Subscription options include free postage and packing. Tidy.
You can use the button below to choose a preferred Subscription option.
GARETH PHILLIPS @ FFOTOGALLERY
Three deconstructed photobook exhibits from the ‘CALIGO’ series by photographer Gareth Phillips are currently showing in Cardiff’s Ffotogallery as part of their new The World Without Us group exhibition which runs until 10 August 2024. More info on the work and other artists featured in the show can be found on the Ffotogallery website.
The Allure of Ruins
Exhibition Review by Ben Woolhead
Wales is renowned for its natural beauty, but Treforest-based photographer Jon Pountney finds himself instinctively drawn to the opposite: the distinctly unnatural beauty of crumbling buildings and a landscape radically and irreversibly transformed by heavy industry. His most recent exhibition Allure of Ruins – featuring work prompted by two previous projects, Beachcombing and God Forgive Me – included images of nature attempting to heal wounds (the long incision made for the Brecon railway at Fochriw, for instance, now only a scar) but also of landforms that are entirely manmade (most obviously Splott Foreshore, constructed out of the rubble from the demolished East Moors steelworks).
Pountney has previously spoken of his fascination with “horizontal archaeology” – the sort you can find on the surface, without having to dig – and there’s a sense in which the conical spoil heaps are South Wales’ own pyramids and the overgrown Penallta Colliery silently overlooking new-build houses is a remnant of some ancient civilisation, hidden in plain sight. The exhibition booklet carries Myfanwy Evans’ apt comment on painter Paul Nash: “No interest in the past as past, but in the accumulated intenseness of the past as present.” That Pountney shares this hauntological perspective is evident in (for instance) the photo depicting the great towering mound of slate that continues to cast a shadow over Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Like David Wilson, Pountney appreciates the rich colour and textural quality of rusting metal (especially against blue sky) and uses light to best advantage, capturing the warm glow of the setting sun on the red brick of Dowlais Ironworks and finding poetry in an open-air urinal.
Allure of Ruins illuminates how we continually make and remake the landscape around us, and the significant human toil required to do so. It also asks us to reflect on what we consider worth conserving and what we let fall into disrepair.
The Allure of Ruins by Jon Pountney was exhibited in Cardiff’s Gallery TEN 19 April - 25 May 2024.
You can read more of Ben Woolhead’s writing on his long-running Blog: www.silentwordsspeakloudest.blogspot.com