News | Thursday, 29th August 2019

Exhibition challenges limits and conventions of photographic image

NOT PHOTOGRAPHY is curated by School of Art's David Penny and Sylvia Waltering

NOT PHOTOGRAPHY is open from September 14-29 (image: Anna Barriball)
NOT PHOTOGRAPHY is open from September 14-29 (image: Anna Barriball)

A new Manchester exhibition explores the limits of photography and challenges its conventions.

NOT PHOTOGRAPHY (September 14-29, Bankley Gallery, Levenshulme, Manchester) presents work from nine artists whose practices engage with what is understood as photographic image, but may not be photographs themselves.

Their interests extend beyond assumed representational limits of photography, exploring expanding relationships with sculpture, printmaking and performance.

image: Sam Mattacott

NOT PHOTOGRAPHY is curated by David Penny and Sylvia Waltering, two artists and senior lecturers in photography from Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Penny said: “We’re approaching photography from an unconventional direction. The title - NOT PHOTOGRAPHY- is more of a provocation that an exhibition statement or manifesto.

“It’s not like there is no photography in the show, there is, as well as sculpture, performance and computer generated video work. We’re inviting audiences to consider the broad range of ways that the photographic is at the centre of lots of different types of artwork as well as objects and images we encounter in everyday life.”

image: Hannah Leighton-Boyce

The show brings together work that negotiates practices across a broad field; from works that reference the first photogenic drawings to what the future of photography may look like through digitally rendered work generated by computer algorithms.

Waltering said: “In an age of fake news and image fatigue the selected work is not aiming to offer an objective representation of reality or the world we live in. The exhibition encourages the audience to respond to the materiality of the work presented in a visceral way.”

Exhibiting artists include:

We’re approaching photography from an unconventional direction. The title - NOT PHOTOGRAPHY- is more of a provocation that an exhibition statement or manifesto.

Hannah Leighton-Boyce and Joshua Phillips are both alumni from Manchester Metropolitan. 

A private view will be held on September 13 (6-9pm). More information can be found at www.notphotography.info.

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