Archives 2.0 / University of Plymouth
Jem Southam
Photographer
Jem Southam was born in Bristol in 1950. He studied at the London College of Printing for a Higher Diploma in Creative Photography from 1969 to 1972. Beginning in the 1970s, Southam began documenting the landscape of the South West of England, patiently and thoughtfully recording changes at a single location over periods of months or years. His richly detailed works document subtle changes and transitions of the landscape, allowing Southam to explore cycles of life and death through spring and winter, and also to reveal the subtlest of human interventions in the natural landscape. His work is characterized by its balance of poetry and lyricism within a documentary practice.
Working exclusively in series, he has produced several bodies of work, including The Raft of Carrots, The Shape of Time: Rockfalls, Rivermouths, Ponds, The River – Winter, The Painter’s Pool, Upton Pyne and The Red River. Southam’s early and seminal body of work The Red River (1982-1987) followed a small stream in the West of Cornwall from source to sea, documenting the legacy of tin mining on the river’s valley and the people who live there.
His 2012 series The River – Winter investigated how the concept of winter is embedded in society’s shared imagination. The series traced the passage of a single winter, following the path of the river Exe and its tributaries in Devon. The Moth (2018), revisits sites from The Red River made almost two decades earlier. Inspired by the old English poems ‘The Wanderer’ and ‘The Seafarer’, the series moves freely between interior and exterior, from sweeping vistas to quiet, overlooked details of rural life.
Jem Southam
Photographer
Jem Southam was born in Bristol in 1950. He studied at the London College of Printing for a Higher Diploma in Creative Photography from 1969 to 1972. Beginning in the 1970s, Southam began documenting the landscape of the South West of England, patiently and thoughtfully recording changes at a single location over periods of months or years. His richly detailed works document subtle changes and transitions of the landscape, allowing Southam to explore cycles of life and death through spring and winter, and also to reveal the subtlest of human interventions in the natural landscape. His work is characterized by its balance of poetry and lyricism within a documentary practice.
Working exclusively in series, he has produced several bodies of work, including The Raft of Carrots, The Shape of Time: Rockfalls, Rivermouths, Ponds, The River – Winter, The Painter’s Pool, Upton Pyne and The Red River. Southam’s early and seminal body of work The Red River (1982-1987) followed a small stream in the West of Cornwall from source to sea, documenting the legacy of tin mining on the river’s valley and the people who live there.
His 2012 series The River – Winter investigated how the concept of winter is embedded in society’s shared imagination. The series traced the passage of a single winter, following the path of the river Exe and its tributaries in Devon. The Moth (2018), revisits sites from The Red River made almost two decades earlier. Inspired by the old English poems ‘The Wanderer’ and ‘The Seafarer’, the series moves freely between interior and exterior, from sweeping vistas to quiet, overlooked details of rural life.
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Emma PortnerDANCER / CHOREOGRAPHERDance is my life. It has kept me alive. Performance is a natural extension of it and through it. I’ve made my most cherished human connections. (more…)
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Ingrid Wiener, Martin RothFeb 10 – May 21, 2023Two artists, two generations. Two first major retrospectives that complement each other in their conceptual approaches. One weaves what she sees, draws and writes what she dreams, takes photos from the plane and is famous for her cuisine. The other, a generation younger, starts with painting, expands into space, creates landscapes (more…)
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Julian Charrière: ErraticAug 6, 2022 – May 14, 2023The fascinations of the Arctic and Antarctic have captured our collective imagination for centuries. For the last decade, French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière has traveled to remote and hostile polar regions to explore humankind’s interconnection with these otherworldly environments (more…)
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Alek O. / On the Final Day You Won’t Need EnglishMar 31 – May 27, 2023Il giorno della fine non ti servirà l’inglese (“On the Final Day You Won’t Need English”) is the title that artist Alek O. has chosen for his first solo exhibition in the Martina Simeti Gallery spaces. (more…)
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Angela Davis JohnsonArtistAngela Davis Johnson creates paintings, public art installations, and ritual performances to examine the technologies of black people, in particular black women/femme. (more…)
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Sacha TurchiArtistSacha Turchi currently lives and works in Italy and collaborates with various visual and sound artists. The interactions between individual and nature, body and psyche, constitutes the essential matrix of her research. (more…)
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Rencontres d’ArlesPhotography FestivalEvery summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city’s exceptional heritage sites, the Rencontres d’Arles has been a major influence in disseminating the best of world photography (more…)
