- Venue
- WORKS|PROJECTS
- Starts
- Saturday, May 2, 2009
- Ends
- Saturday, June 13, 2009
- Address
- Sydney Row Bristol BS1 1 6UX
- Location
- South West England
Sarah Dobai's new body of works, Studio/Location Photographs, consists of more than a dozen photographs that explore the nature of public space in the city. The new work positions public space as a force that de-stabilises the separation of the mainstream from the marginal and the theatrical from the everyday. The new series focuses on the image of the shopping mall, juxtaposing photographs of un-peopled sites shot in and around malls, with images of actor/models taken in the studio. In the studio the models are pictured in a sets whose construction intentionally echoes the architectural qualities of the urban spaces photographed. The demeanour of the actor/models in the studio photographs moves between the enacted and un-posed, drawing parallels between people's uneasy relation to public space in everyday life and how a model finds ‘a way to be' in the theatrical context of the photo-shoot. In Studio/Location Photographs, with its focus on the highly constructed quality of urban settings, the distinction between documentary and studio-based approaches to photography becomes fluid and hard to determine. Within this slippage, the new works create a subtle tension between echoes of the glamour of high fashion and suggestions of urban neglect and social isolation that is seductive and unsettling in equal measure.
