You Don’t Look Native to Me | A Year in Protest | The rage of devotion |Of Swallow and Ravens
Journey to the Interior | Temporarily Censored Home | Alone with Empire: The Counter Archive
Better Days | Woman Go No'Gree
FORMAT19
Quad Extra Gallery Spaces, Market Place Cathedral Quarter, Market Place, Derby DE1 3AS
Royal Photographic Society Award
“You Don’t Look Native to Me”
Since 2011, Maria Sturm has photographed the unrecognised Lumbee Tribe from around Pembroke, North Carolina, where 89 percent of the population identifies as Native American. Sturm’s photographs might appear to depict a community almost anywhere in America, but elements of hybridity signify the mixing of heritage and contemporary culture.
Karl Ohiri (UK)
A Year in Protest
Since the 1st of January 2018 the artist has resisted the urge to comment on, or take part in any online social-political debates. Instead he has taken his opinions offline in a series of self-portraits that when scanned via the QR code directs the viewer to his source of protest.
Liza Ambrossio (MX/ES)
The rage of devotion
At sixteen years old, Liza Ambrossio asked a house-keeper from her mother's home to steal photographs from the family photo-albums. Liza was looking for ways to survive away from her family’s decisions. Her project The rage of devotion, shows these childhood memories, alongside chilling early-morning scenes in Mexico City, and images of her mental and real travels from her own adolescence to adulthood.
www.lizaambrossio.com
Steven Barritt (UK)
Of Swallow and Ravens
Touching on subjects such as quantum mechanics, astronomy and mathematics the series questions ideas of the self and consciousness. Via cybernetics, space travel and science fiction, photography and its relationship to the real is examined and questioned, ambiguity and mystery are combined with visualization and documentation to create a kind of spectral dissonance.
Garrett Grove (USA)
Journey to the Interior
A series of works that focus on themes of identity, anxiety and the current state of the American Dream, such as it was in the rural communities when Garrett Grove lived in and travelled through, while working on this project.
Guanyu Xu (CN/USA)
Temporarily Censored Home
In Guanyu Xu’s project Temporarily Censored Home, he covertly situated
photographs into temporary installations in his teenage home in Beijing to ‘queer’
the heteronormativity of his parents' space. Even though these installations were
not permanent, Xu reclaimed his childhood home as a queer space of freedom and a
temporary protest.
www.xuguanyu.com
IC Visual Lab (UK)
Alone with Empire: The Counter Archive
Presented here for the first time at FORMAT Festival, Alone with Empire: The Counter Archive is an interactive-display that maps out key elements from IC Visual Lab’s recent commission working with the British Empire and Commonwealth Film Collection held at Bristol Archives. Showcasing generated film sequences, catalogued emotional responses and a curated soundscape.
www.icvl.co.uk
Seunggu Kim (KR)
Better Days
Korea has developed rapidly over the last 40 years, which has caused a lot of social ironies. One of these is long working hours with mini-breaks. During holidays, Koreans try their best to enjoy it. The "Better Days" explores the spectacle of Korean short vacation.
www.seunggukim.com
Gloria Oyarzabal (ES)
Woman Go No'Gree
A series that was inspired by research conducted during a residency at the Art House Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria, and the reading of The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses by controversial feminist author Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, a decolonising voice that questions the rational theoretical frameworks used to define the parameters of a purportedly universal gender category.
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