The primary Photoworks Competition involves you in 3 ways
The first edition of the Photoworks Festival starts on September 24th and focuses on the theme of alternative narrative proposals. While the festival takes place amid the pandemic that has changed the traditional format of most events due to social distancing requirements and travel restrictions, the Photoworks Festival will evolve in three ways.
The work will be displayed on an outdoor billboard around Brighton and Hove, which will have an online counterpart in the form of a digital festival hub. The final element is the "Festival in a Box" with printed versions of the works that will be mailed to people who register as members of the Photoworks Friend Community. Various institutions around the world will also "host" the boxed version for visitors. For more information, check out social media where you can find it.
The box format is based on La Boite-en-Valise by the surrealist Marcel Duchamp – a small suitcase museum with reproductions of his works – as well as on the mobile museums of the artist Dayanita Singh, a concept that aims to question the formal limits of exhibitions.
Picture above: 24. Parallel South, Chile, 2018, from the series Human Territoriality, 2016-19 © Roger Eberhard. Here: Aj and Akuac from the present, finally for Luncheon Magazine 8, 2019 © Ronan Mckenzie
Eleven international artists are represented at the festival, including London-based photographer Ronan Mckenzie – one of the 21 jurors of the CR Photography Annual 2020 – whose work will explore the color brown. The festival includes works by the United Arab Emirates-born, New York-based photographer and musician Farah Al Qasimi, as well as Chicago-based photographer Guanyu Xu, who caught the attention of the photography world with his series on sexuality and heteronormativity in relation to his upbringing in China attracted.
Also on display at the festival are Ivar Grāvlej's photographs of supermarket checkouts, Pixy Liao's work on exploring intercultural relationships, Roger Eberhard's images of past frontiers, Alix Marie's photographic exploration of the body's role in evoking emotions, and Poulomi Basu's recording of the war between the governments and the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, a Maoist insurgent group in India.
Things We Talk About, 2013, in the Experimental Relationship series, 2007-20 © Pixy Liao
The spectrum of channels is suitable for artists whose practice is interdisciplinary, such as Alberta Whittle with her interactive installations inspired by Afrofuturism and Sethembile Msezane, who works beyond film, sculpture, photography and drawing in her questioning of spirituality, myth and film. Making, Politics and African Knowledge Systems. Lotte Andersen, who works on video, collage, performance and beyond, has created a collaged piece for the outdoor area and the “in a box” format that will serve as an invitation to an online work in October.
In addition to the festival's central exhibition, an archive project by the LGBTQ + youth group Queer History Now and a showcase for young photographers to explore heritage with a focus on the untold stories from the history books will be shown.
Photoworks Festival in a box
The festival ties in with the topic of alternative narratives, which will run in Photoworks in 2020 and will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. The Brighton-based charity, led by director Shoair Mavlian, uses the festival to re-examine cultural hierarchies and histories.
"Our first Photoworks Festival is reworking both the form and content of traditional festivals, trying to disrupt the familiar stories of photography and break them apart to bring in new perspectives," said Mavlian. "Our festival recognizes that the idea of a particular story in photography is problematic and aims to highlight suggestions for alternative stories alongside contemporary work that are intended to provide a new or alternative perspective on a subject or question."
The day Rhodes fell out of the Kwasuka Sukela series, 2015 © Sethembile Msezane, Chapungu
S Eating Melon, 2016, from the series Arrival, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai © Farah Al Qasimi
Opened cabinets from the Temporically Censored Home series, 2018-19. Image courtesy of the artist and the Yancey Richardson Gallery © Guanyu Xu
From the Centralia series, 2010-20 © Poulomi Basu
From the Business as Usual series, 2017-20 © Alberta Whittle
Shopping poetry, 2012-20 © Ivars Gravlejs
The Photoworks Festival runs from September 24th to October 25th. photoworks.org.uk