Disrupted Landscapes

A three-person exhibition of photography and video from Mandy Williams, Colin Pantall and Dawn Rodgers

Four Corners, 121 Roman Road London E2 0QN

Disrupted Landscapes examines three representations of landscape in which personal histories, family trauma, and political narratives combine with the geology, geography, and the topographical uniqueness of England’s thin places.

In this vision, the past bleeds into the present, feet leave their imprints in the earth, but traces are also picked up from the earth. In Disrupted Landscapes, the earth holds knowledge, holds histories, and provides pathways between different strata of being and selfhood.

Artist Biographies

Mandy Williams is a London-based artist working with photography, video and sound to disrupt and expand traditional representations of landscape. Since 2016 her projects have focused on English coastal landscapes. They have become a place for her to explore themes of solitude and grief, and to reflect on contemporary politics and environmental issues.

http://mandywilliams.com/

Colin Pantall is a writer, lecturer and photographer based in Bath. His immersive photography is led by his immediate physical and domestic environments, and includes his projects 3 Valleys, Sofa Portraits, All Quiet on the Home Front, and My German Family Album, projects that look at his own family and surroundings from personal, environmental, and historical perspectives.

https://www.colinpantall.com/

Dawn Rodgers is a visual artists and educator based in Berkshire, she navigates the landscape of the Ridgeway in Dorset, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, utilising photography, Mythology, and folklore as a means of exploring and expressing grief, loss and absence. Her practice is centred around the death of her brother and the complexity of feelings that grief leaves in its wake.

http://www.dawnrodgers.co.uk/

England / Reflection

A two-person exhibition from LCC MA Photography students Mandy Williams and Natalie Robinson

Offshoot Gallery, 162 High Road, London N2 9AS

Updated 30 January 2021

Our exhibition was installed at Offshoot Gallery, but because of government restrictions and national lockdown we couldn't open as planned.

On Thursday 14 January - the date of the original pv - a small preview of installation work was published on Offshoot Gallery’s website.

On Thursday 21 January Offshoot Gallery published a more in-depth look at England / Reflection with thoughts from Natalie and myself.

On Thursday 28 January Offshoot published our conversation with writer/curator Charlotte Russell about our exhibition and art practice.

You can view some of my work England here.

England / Reflection was a two-person photography and mixed media exhibition by University of Arts London LCC MA Photography students Mandy Williams and Natalie Robinson. Both artists are interested in how politics and power have shaped the landscape and use the river and sea as channels for reflecting on contemporary culture.

England                                                                                         

Williams’ series of black and white photographs of English landscapes show a progression from rupture to deformation. In some images these Disrupted Landscapes are merged with alien geographies accessed from NASA that resemble elements of our own landscape while unable to support human life. As England becomes increasingly hostile to those it perceives as outsiders, Williams uses these geographies to represent a landscape that has become alienated and unstable, and which causes harm. The environments bleed into one another, sometimes barely perceptibly, at other times jarringly. Land is reversed and inverted; black borders divide and enclose these rigid, disarticulated landscapes.

The photographs are paired with a short video, Inward Island, that tells the story of an island through its landscape. It uses increasing degrees of colourisation to produce a gradual and hypnotic visual transformation that contrasts with the increasingly unnerving soundtrack. Through the video’s use of metaphor, the beauty of the landscape is first revealed, and then reversed.

Reflection: what lies beneath – new maps

Robinson’s work explores a body of work inspired by a moment of light. The light cast by the sun reflecting onto the ground from the glass tower in Angel Court [EC2] brings to life the lost river of the City of London - the Walbrook - which once ran below. The river -until a thousand years ago, the lifeblood of the City- was enclosed, covered and lost as a result of the human enterprise which created the dense financial powerhouse that we know today.

In addition to sharing that moment of light, the images shown -drawn from the documentation of the process of making the body of work- remember working with textiles to recall the fluidity of the river and then map the stages in the development of a model to create a place shaped for reflection on the exploitations from which the City has grown.

Biographies

Mandy Williams works with photography, video and sound to disrupt and expand traditional representations of landscape. She is concerned with the psychology of place and approaches contemporary issues in a reflective way, experimenting with media and metaphor to create new narratives.

Natalie Robinson uses photography to observe that ‘things are not always as they seem’ both in a landscape and urban context. With a background in architecture she takes a sculptural and place-making approach to the way her images are shown with the intention of engaging the viewer with her experience.

Contact information

Mandy Williams info@mandywilliams.com  / https://mandywilliams.com

Natalie Robinson pictalie@icloud.com / www.pictalie.com

Offshoot Gallery info@offshootgallery.com

If you have any questions about the work or would like to see more images, please get in touch.

Worthing Museum & Art Gallery, Chapel Road, Worthing, BN11 1HP

Saturday 18 January – Saturday 23 May 2020

Open Tuesday - Saturday 10 - 5

A strange and familiar sea is a photography exhibition by Mandy Williams that brings together work from three photographic series about the sea to the resort town of Worthing.

In Beyond Land the photographs take place at the street, a causeway that reveals itself at low tide. Started a month after the referendum result with its emphasis on Britain as an island nation, geographically and psychologically separate from Europe, the photographs show a collective march to the water’s edge. The line of people following disappearing paths out to sea not only documents our innate connection to water but can also be seen as a metaphor for the times.

Sea Level and Frame were shot in Worthing w­here she lived as a teenager and focus on the beach shelters along the promenade. In Sea Level the photographs are taken at high tide, when the shelters are empty. Their windows are weathered and scratched by the wind. The view of the sea through this prism produces images that are quite abstract - the sea and the markings on the glass have equal importance in the finished photograph.

Frame captures people as they walk by the shelters, their bodies barely discernible as they pass the central arms of the cross frame or are swept along by the wind. The textures of the environment at that moment are imprinted on the figure. Frame is exhibited as 12 captures. A video is also on display.

Finally, a new work, Trace, (created especially for the exhibition), provides an impression of the sea printed onto three translucent acrylic squares of different sea-coloured hues, allowing the viewer to experience the waves through the windows in a more tactile and sensory way.

Mandy Williams is a photographer and artist who works on long-form landscape series concerned with the psychology of place and how the marks of time and human presence affect the environment.

A strange and familiar sea is her 4th solo exhibition in the UK. Recent group exhibitions include the 209 Women exhibition at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (2019), Women Photographers Today, Gallery Valid Foto, Barcelona (2019) and Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2019).  She received the Photography prize at the Royal West of England Academy in 2014, 3rd place in the International Photographer of the Year Award 2017 in Landscapes: Seascapes, and work from Sea Level was shortlisted for the 2018 Hariban Award, and an Awardee in the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards 2018. 

Contact information

Mandy Williams info@mandywilliams.com  / 07817 397 747 / https://mandywilliams.com

Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, Chapel Road, Worthing, BN11 1HP

https://wtam.uk/ / https://wtam.uk/whats-on/art-heritage/

Exhibition video interview

With support from Metro Imaging Ltd

Beyond the Reach of Rivers is a photography exhibition by Mandy Williams that brings together work from two photographic series about the sea to the beachfront in Brighton.

Sea Level is shot in the Sussex town w­here she lived as a teenager and focuses on the beach shelters that line the promenade – a place to congregate and watch the sea. The photographs are taken at high tide, when the shelters are empty. Their windows are weathered and dusty and scratched by the wind. Absent of people, their presence lingers through traces of graffiti, dirt and other debris. The view of the sea through this prism produces images that are often quite abstract - the sea and the markings on the glass have equal importance in the finished photograph. Dust and neglect becomes part of the image, reinforcing the sense of melancholy which runs through many seaside towns.

In Beyond Land the photographs take place at the street, a causeway that reveals itself at low tide, stretching out towards the horizon like an umbilical cord connecting us to the sea. Started a month after the referendum result with its emphasis on Britain as an island nation, geographically and psychologically separate from Europe, the photographs show a collective march to the water’s edge. The line of people following disappearing paths out to sea not only documents our innate connection to water but can also be seen as a metaphor for the times.

Mandy Williams is a photographer and artist who works on long-form landscape series concerned with the psychology of place and how the marks of time and human presence affect the environment. Often her photographs show a place that has been compromised – either by environmental factors or by its connection to a specific narrative.

Beyond the Reach of Rivers is her 3rd solo exhibition in the UK. Recent group exhibitions include the 209 Women exhibition at the Houses of Parliament (2018) and Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (2019), and The Family of No Man, Cosmos, Arles (2018). She received the Photography prize at the Royal West of England Academy in 2014, 3rd place in the International Photographer of the Year Award 2017 in Landscapes: Seascapes, and work from Sea Level was shortlisted for the 2018 Hariban Award, and was an Awardee in the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards 2018.

*The title of the exhibition is taken from Loren Eiseley, an anthropologist and natural science writer whose writings frequently reference our evolutionary connection to the sea.

 Contact information

Mandy Williams info@mandywilliams.com  

Fishing Quarter Gallery, 201 Kings Road Arches, Brighton BN1 1NB

info@quartergallery.co.uk / 01273 723064­