Exhibitions

Shifting Horizons @ Digital Window Gallery

27 March - 31 March 2024

PLATFORM: ISSUE 6

26 March 2024

Events

Saturday Town: Launch Event

10 April 2024

Exhibitions

Coming Soon: Saturday Town

11 April - 18 May 2024

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PLATFORM: ZINE LAUNCH EVENT

21 March 2024

Home. Ukrainian Photography, UK Words: Tour

4 March - 28 February 2025

Exhibitions

Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words @ New Adelphi

4 March - 8 March 2024

Past Events

CREATIVE SOCIAL: IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL GROUND

2 March 2024

Exhibitions

We Feed The UK @ Exterior Walls

8 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contrail Cirrus: the impact of aviation on climate change

7 March 2024

Exhibitions

Tree Story @ Liverpool ONE

16 February - 1 May 2024

Open Source #27: Saffron Lily – In The Absence of Formal Ground @ Digital Window Gallery

6 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contemporary Photography from Ukraine: Symposium @University of Salford

4 March - 5 March 2024

Past Events

Is Anybody Listening? Symposium: Commissioning and Collecting Socially Engaged Photography

29 February 2024

Past Events

Different approaches: Artists working with scientists

15 February 2024

Events

LOOK Climate Lab 2024: All Events

18 January 2024

Exhibitions

Diesel & Dust @ Digital Window Gallery

18 January - 31 March 2024

Events

Tree Walks Of Sefton Park with Andrea Ku

21 January 2024

Past Events

Artists Remake the World by Vid Simoniti: Book Launch

31 January 2024

Past Events

Shift Liverpool Open Meeting

6 February 2024

Past Events

We Feed The UK Launch and LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Celebration

8 February 2024

Past Events

Cyanotype workshop with Melanie King

17 February 2024

Past Events

End of Empire: artist talk and discussion

22 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes

24 February 2024

Past Events

Local ecology in the post-industrial era: open discussion

14 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: creative writing workshop

23 March 2024

Past Events

Plant a seed. Seed sow and in conversation with Plot2Plate

16 March 2024

Past Events

Erosion: panel discussion

9 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: an evening of poetry and photographs

23 March 2024

Events

Force For Nature Exhibition

27 March - 28 March 2024

Voices of Nature: Interactive Performances

28 March 2024

Past Events

Sum of All Parts: Symposium

27 February 2024

Exhibitions Main Exhibition

LOOK Climate Lab 2024

18 January - 31 March 2024

Past Events

MA Socially engaged photography Open Day event

1 February 2023

Past Events

Tish: Special screening and Q&A

13 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

Events

Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

Past Events

Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

Exhibitions

Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

Past Events

Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

Past Events

Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

Past Exhibitions

Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

Past Events

Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

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© Michelle Sank
© Michelle Sank
© Michelle Sank
© Michelle Sank

POSTERS, PLUSHIES AND POTS OF SUDOCREM: SPOTLIGHT ON MY.SELF BY SAM PHASEY

believe in God   culture – have lots’

My.Self, produced by photographer Michelle Sank and Sandwell-based community art company Multistory, is an examination of the Black Country’s varied youth. The series echoes work that Multistory has pursued with Martin Parr in the Black Country previously (Black Country Stories, 2010). An intimate series of bedroom vignettes, the portraits catalogue a diversity of cultures, experiences, hopes and aspirations. What does it mean to be a young person in today’s society? What does it mean to live in the Black Country?

‘The yam yam accent gets too much sometimes’

 Faces and poses range from insecure to assured. Some of the teenagers perch on bed corners, some crouch on bunk ladders. Others meet the camera’s gaze with confidence (feigned or sincere), or uncomfortably stare at some unknowable point on the carpet. Outfits, similarly, run the gamut from school-wear to sports-wear to sequins and sparkles.

‘Casual for college. Classy for eveningwear.’

The rooms, however, articulate as much about the youths as their attire, expressions and postures do: floral wallpapers and white bedspreads are both consonant and discordant with the subjects lying against and on top of them. These small clashes and co-ordinations evoke a nuanced, intimate knowledge of the subjects. From dollhouses to dermatology, each bedroom relays the individual’s interests through their clutter, whether spartan, or swarming with miscellany— shelves and surfaces decorated with autobiographical ornaments— posters, plushies and pots of Sudocrem. Between these and other details, we infer relatable narratives of teenage obsessions, angsts and anxieties: what pictures used to hang from those errant nails? What outpourings of emotion imprinted themselves on that paintwork?

‘I love my family. I barely know half of them but I still love them all regardless’

 Conversely, in one instance, the subject’s wall is so neutral, so unadorned, that elements from the photo overleaf begin to bleed through, creating a palimpsest that binds the two images together. This accidental enmeshing perhaps calls into question the otherwise isolating format of the portraiture— is it wholly apposite for a community orientated project?

 ‘I Pray sometimes’

Nonetheless, the portraits’ mise-en-scène is highly successful in providing us with access to the individual youths’ lives— their worlds— from comic books and cosplay to harps and helmets. The subjects are as diverse in their interests as in their identities, if the two can be meaningfully separated.

‘I would like to be a choreographer or dancer

The photographs were planned with the active engagement of the subjects: ‘[w]e asked them to consider the particularities and specifics of their clothes and make-up’. This collaborative, conscious process results in an almost performative quality emerging in the photos: what we are made privy to is not only intimacy, but intimacy which knows it is intimate. The subjects’ vulnerability is— to a certain extent— constructed, guarded. Consequently, as much as they are identity documents, the photographs also reflect the youths’ self-perception, and the way they choose to situate themselves in the world.

‘I believe we are all equal, Sexuality, Religion, Race’

 Each portrait is sparsely captioned with the first names of the teens, drawing out, rather than drowning out, each individual’s personhood, and allowing the photographs to elucidate the details. The images are, however, presented alongside a series of paper questionnaires that have been filled in by other Black Country youths: ‘What do you like about yourself?’ ‘Where do you see yourself in 10 years?’ ‘How do you feel about religion or culture?’ The A4 proportioned forms’ programmatic listing of likes, dislikes, dreams and descriptions contrasts with the organic processes of discovery and interpretation that we undertake when engaging with the photographs themselves. That said, each is handwritten— framed by scribbles and scratches— and from those lapses, that authorial exercise of intent and accident, we glimpse the same richness and diversity of personhood evinced by the photographs themselves.

 ‘I would like to have published novels’

When viewing this series it is, of course, difficult for any audience not to feel haunted by their own teenage experiences and aspirations. The poses, gazes and expressions of the youths inspire fleeting reminiscences— a sort of introspective saudade or sehnsucht— a fragmentary remembrance of one’s past selves. Passions and anxieties re-emerge— was I once that scared, that ashamed? Or was I that strong, that assured?

‘Edgy, Androgynous, Grunge, Dark, Plaid’

Michelle Sank has also contributed work to the SIXTEEN project, a thematically similar portraiture series, which is currently exhibiting throughout Liverpool at Open Eye Gallery, Tate Liverpool Exchange and Ropes and Twines.

My.Self is currently available in the Open Eye Gallery independent book shop for £15.

 

 

Words: Sam Phasey

Images: Michelle Sank

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