The Rooftop Collective - Edition III

During Photo Month, the East London International Photography Festival, the Rooftop Collective will be exhibiting at the Curious Duke Gallery. The collective is a group of London-based photographers with diverse practices who share an ongoing dialogue and exhibit at locations around the capital. In the Collective’s third show, every artist presents a selection of works showcasing their current practice.

About the artists & photographs on display:

CHRIS KING - The Brit’s South
Selected images are part of an ongoing series that distils the essence of what is, to some, everyday reality. “I am attempting not only to show the novelty of the South to a Brit, but also to present a new perspective to individuals who know it as home. Images taken at night show isolated trees and a church cross as an unexpected mystery, while a snow-covered West Texas field is altogether a rarity.”

The finished images possess a notably painterly quality. Presented in the photographer’s characteristic style of c-type prints without glazing and black frames that hug scenes, the photographs appear to be a view through windows that gaze into a different world.

CONSTANZA ISAZA – Evolution
This series depicts a collection of seashells in an advanced state of decay and calcification. The images recall the conventions of Early Modern Northern European still life painting through their emphasis on lighting, texture and minute detail.

The images are printed as photopolymer gravures (or etchings), made from oil-based etching ink to form a carbon-based image, which is chemically stable and fully archival. The image-making process thereby echoes the calcification and metamorphosis the shells themselves have undergone.

MARY-JANE MAYBURY - The Midst of Paradise
The Berlin Olympics of 1936 was the Olympics of Jesse Owen and Leni Riefenstahl, of boycotts and Nazi propaganda.

Designed in the shape of Germany, the athletes’ village was on the outskirts of Berlin. A Norwegian newspaper quoted one athlete as saying: “It is so lovely here that we dread the return of everyday life. We are living in the midst of paradise.”

The Russians took it over and used it as a military base during the cold war, painting murals over Nazi ones.

Today, it lies in a decrepit state. The swimming pool roof has been repaired, but some of the best architecture is in poor condition. The evidence of decades of neglect is everywhere.

PAUL CLIFFORD – Falling Shadows
Dark lines and shapes slither, rake, draw and carve their way across the urban landscape. Manmade forms block light from our sun to cast an echo upon the space beyond.

Paul has created compositions in which shadows imprint a new, transient image upon the world around us.

TOBY DEVESON – West of the Sun
“But what is there, west of the sun?” I asked.
She shook her head again. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something."

“These two lines from Haruki Murakami's 1992 novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, gave birth to a concept that has come to represent my landscape photography and the way in which I work.

In 'West of the Sun', I had found a perfect description of a state of mind into which I try to enter when I work. As if forever seeking that “perfect” image, found just over the horizon and to the West of the Sun.”

VANESSA SHORT – Other Side of the Line
Other Side of the Line looks at those involved in the national coal miners strike of 1984-1984. Emerge from the darkness of both the pit bottom and 30 years of silence to reveal their personal stories.
Through portraits and interviews these men and women shed light on stories seldom told and the stigma attached to their decision to cross the picket line.

These are the people that share the other side of a bitter strike that divided this country and its communities.