MA Photography at LCC has an international reputation for research-led, conceptually driven gallery practices, and has nurtured many celebrated photographers and artists from around the globe.
In this year’s line-up of work – shown in LCC Postgraduate Shows 2018: Show 1, 14th – 18th November 2018 – students explore the ever-expanding boundaries of the photographic medium, developing a distinctive and interdisciplinary body of work.
Here we shine a spotlight on some of projects on show…
Crystal Pan
‘Rash’
‘Rash is a project that focuses on tropical plants cultivated in foreign countries and their interactions with the surrounding urban landscape. It comes from my interest in exploring how the imaginaries of contemporary lifestyle can be shaped by botanical history during the colonial period since 16th century. The botanical garden is a perfect example of European colonial conquest; it showcases a great variety of plants collected from around the world during the colonial period. In botanical gardens, cacti can be grown under the same roof as orchids, ignoring the fact that their origins stretch from Asia to South America. I grew up in Taiwan, a sub-tropical country and a former colony, and to witness bamboo being planted besides palm trees in Kew Gardens is unsettling. I also observe specific tropical plants are favoured internationally as aesthetic houseplants. My empathy for tropical plants away from home informs my work on this project, as I seek to explore their situation through my images.’
Han Zhang
‘The Swage’
‘The Swage is an attempt to initiate a conversation on interchangeable gaze, oppression and desires. I appropriate images with blatant and even violent titles from pornography websites, print them out, place them on underwear and scan them. I am fascinated by the almost suffocating effect from the scanner and the tactility and intimacy of both paper and fabric. The found material is presented in collages with original photography displaying my voyeuristic observation of a hegemonic masculinity and fragments of life. The contrast between the high resolution scanned background and the deliberately blurred casual snapshots is a mix of “high” and “low”, blending what is mainstream and what is marginalised. With my constant interest in various manifestations of masculinity and how they relate to radicalised subjectivities and the male body, I hope to give voice to an underrepresented segment of the population, a segment of which I am a part.’
Alessia Stranieri
‘τέχνη’
‘τέχνη is a mixture of digital media such as video, 3D rendering, and sound. It is the product of the mind-meld between 3 artists working remotely from London, Seoul and Porto. My research starts with a personal need to investigate the real nature of art and how this is being used within our society. Just as the camera obscura or the cinematograph, artists work in every new media available to them. In order to keep up with technology, art is therefore aiming to become more and more intangible, less and less static. Artists today are not borderline characters on the fringes of society, they are not only creatives, they are also inventors, they are technicians. Ultimately they can decide how they are going to show a certain technology to the world and in what way.’
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