Posts tagged: Photography

Artist: Lizzie King

Title: Belonging

Year: 2021

Medium: C-Type print of 42 individual silver gelatin prints

Accession Number: US2022-04A

Acquisition info:

Lizzie King uses analogue and digital printmaking and photography to explore the ‘narratives of our human-centred universe’. This work was one of two pieces commissioned for Rediscovering Salford in 2020, a city-wide project inviting artists to respond to green spaces in the city.

King focussed on Peel Park and the importance of free and open ‘parks for the people’. Demand for public green spaces traces its roots to the Victorian era, and the park is widely recognised as one of the first ever public parks – and the first to be paid for by public subscription. This importance was heightened during the Covid-19 pandemic: while the artist was shielding it was one of the few safe places to visit.

The park bench became an important symbol of rest, relaxation and reflection: ‘The bench asks nothing of the sitter but ‘to be’’. In this work King reverses the roles – the bench itself becomes the ‘sitter’ of a ‘portrait’. Using an elaborate process of photography, engraving, enlarging and digitally combining 42 original images into one composition, the making of the work itself also became a meditative and reflective process.

Artist: Claudia Alonso

Title: Jackie Kay

Year: 2015

Medium: Photograph

Dimensions: H: 85.5cm W: 99cm

Accession Number: US2015-14

Acquisition info:

This portrait was commissioned by the University of Salford at the installation of Jackie Kay as the new Chancellor. Alonso, then a first year BA Visual Arts student, was selected by a panel for the commission, alongside Rory Mullen (MA Visual Arts). Alonso chose to undertake the photoshoot at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, reflecting on Kay’s background in poetry and literature.

Alonso was born in Spain and studied Graphic Design and Advertising before undertaking Visual Arts at the University of Salford. Photography is at the core of her creative practice, with recent projects also branching out into textiles and printmaking.

Artist: Harold Riley (1934-2023)

Title: The Passageway Graffiti (Brindle Heath)

Year: 1976

Medium: Photograph

Dimensions: H: 56.4cm W: 45cm

Accession Number: GMC 1979/P7

Artist: Jesse Glazzard

Title: LGBT+ Letters

Year: 2018-19

Medium: Series, Film Photographs accompanied by letters from the subjects.

Dimensions:

Photographs: W: 59.4 cm, H:8 4.1 cm, each accompanied by an A4 letter.

Accession Number:

Acquisition info:

Jesse’s own coming-out at secondary school was fraught with the fear, and harsh reality, of violent backlash. But it was also hampered by what Glazzard saw as a complete lack of queer visibility. He had simply no experience of how to become queer. Glazzard’s first cultural experience of queer romance was of a single ‘chaste, lesbian kiss’ on the popular soap opera EastEnders at the age of 9.

While LGBTQI representation in popular culture has improved, Glazzard describes still seeing many stale stereotypes, which this photographic work seeks to rectify. LGBT+ Letters is an attempt at providing, through portraits and texts, queer aesthetics for people who find themselves without meaningful representation in the world. In the photography series, Glazzard demonstrates a lack of self-indulgence rather a strong belief in accommodating to his subjects’ individualities, and ultimately to build trust, capture intimacy, educate and inform.

The LGBT+ Letters series was gifted to the Collection at the culmination of the artists time on the Art Collection’s Graduate Scholarship Programme, run in partnership with Castlefield Gallery.

Portraits:

Letters: