Week 7 - Gallery visits

This week we went as a group to a few galleries - I had to bail before the last one (the Barbican) which was a shame as this promised to be the most controversial but I will try and go on my own at some point. The ones I made it to were the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at a little place in South Ken; the Photographer's Gallery where there were three exhibitions on (more below); and The Observatory, a cafe with a surprisingly nice gallery attached as the ad used to have it. This is what I wrote about the Taylor Wessing soon after visiting: 

"... at a little offshoot of the Portrait Gallery in South Ken (the PG being refurbished still). Not sure there was much narrative on display and the winning image (laundry, 2020, pandemic, hidden face, sun hat, clothes horse, 2 pics, artless - see it online here)? Meh. But Ed Alcock's photo of [Valerie Bacot] who murdered her husband after enduring years of abuse since she was 10? Very beautifully done - narrow DoF as is the way these days, nice soft light, vignetting, warm tones, she's looking off to the photographer's right, not at the lens, but then she is waiting to be sentenced for her murder of her husband so her distraction is part of the story. Beautiful."  

You can see an online version of Alcock's photograph here. 

Other issues? Consent - who gives it for the dementia sufferers depicted? Also, where are the Norwich-based white male middle managers...? 

Anyway, we moved on fairly quickly to the Photographer's Gallery where we seemed to mostly agree that the Chris Killip retrospective had a lot to offer, and I thought the Alternative History of Photography was great - not the sort of thing that would normally appeal but it turned out to be very interesting with lots of surprising pleasures including light-touch and fun wall text that made me re-evaluate my opinion of, inter alia, Queen Victoria (you'll have to go to see what I mean - check out the picture of a child from present-day Ethiopia who was part of the royal family there but forced to stay in 19th Century England thanks to warring European colonialists - very sad and sensitive comments from Vicky about him in her diaries apparently). 

Then on to The Observatory - didn't take much away from this TBH. I might go back here again, and to the Photographer's Gallery, for a more in-depth look. My takeaway from all these would be to recommend the Alternative History of Photography exhibition - the best thing I have seen at the PG for years. 

Before I go - as this is a photography blog, here's a picture from the exercise in week 6 at the RHACC classroom - not what I was after but, well, you know how it goes in photography...