'170 Seconds'. Face to Face

15th Mar 2013 - 22nd Mar 2013

University Gallery
Gallery Closed Sundays

The University of Brighton presents ‘170 Seconds’ an eclectic and dynamic exhibition of works by Second Year students from the Faculty of Arts. Separated into three separate exhibitions there is an opportunity to see a diverse range of styles, media and contextualisation.

This showcase provides an opportunity for emerging student artists who, together with members of staff from the University of Brighton, organize, create and curate the exhibition as part of the student’s developing professional practice.

‘170 Seconds’ provides the public with selection of exciting new work demonstrating the diversity of art practices, inviting audiences to engage with current discussion surrounding contemporary themes and concerns.

Face to Face

77 second year students from the University of Brighton present a selection of exciting new work from the disciplines of Photography, Sculpture and Moving Image as they approach the mid-point of their degrees.

This is the first opportunity to experience their work within the established University of Brighton Gallery. The show has been collectively curated by students to offer an immersive insight into their individual and diverse contemporary practices, with each body of work contrasting, complementing or questioning the next.

Introduction by Fergus Heron, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader, BA (Hons) Photography:

Face to Face comprises work by second year students on the BA (Hons) Photography course in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Brighton.

The course supports the development of students as independent creative practitioners, who develop their own response to conceptual problems, who explore questions through their work, and who support each other through ongoing conversation and collaborative working in a creative and critical environment.

This exhibition demonstrates a range of photographic practices that take place on our course. These include critical, explorative and experimental works focused upon concepts such as the archive, allegory, identity, narrative, performance and place, as well as more traditional works focused upon issues of social, cultural and historical concern.

The exhibition title is suggestive. The word Face is both a noun and a verb, naming the area of the body where visual sense impressions are experienced, and, the act of recognising a given situation such experience might involve. To consider photography in this connection is perhaps to recognise a practice that faces a given subject, object or experienced situation, and, the process of exhibition spectatorship through which we as viewers face new possibilities of seeing such experiences. Face to Face invites dialogue between such practices and possibilities.

Possibilities are what the works in this exhibition ultimately involve. Each is a curious and intelligent exploration through photography, towards seeing the complexity of current experiences and thinking about how they might continue to be faced.