T'Art Interview

An interview with me on the Tooting Artists website, following Wandworth Artists Open House 2010

T'Art Interview

Thank you Gillian!

Wandsworth Artists' Open House 2010

"Found Skull (2)" ⓒ Copyright Cate McRae 2008
(5" x 8" fibre-based print, toned with selenium, sepia and gold)

Earlier in the summer I was asked by a local textile artist fabric nation if I would like to join her at her house, to show prints as part of the Wandsworth Artists Open House.

It is taking place over 2-3 and 9-10 October, 11am- 6pm.

I will be showing around 20 prints, including both older work and some new work from 2010. Some will be available as prints only (mainly a few colour pigment prints). The rest will be fibre-based black-and-white darkroom printed and toned prints, some of which will be available for sale archivally mounted and framed. There will also be a chance to see some of the photorestoration work I have done for Furzedown Voices Oral History Project (including postcards which will be on sale, proceeds to the Project).

The work mainly concerns personally familiar 'landscapes' (and can include found objects within those landscapes), as well as family. A sense of place, and an exploration of landscape and memory, are key elements in my work. I have been working recently on the place of close family members within a certain 'landscape', and a portrayal of that 'landscape', although the number of these at the Open House will be limited as a sense of close narrative is very important for the whole series and it is not possible to show them all. There will be a careful selection, though.

Also showing work at the same venue (no 78 on attached guide, linked below!) will be Mandy Trepstow, Louise Williams and Neil Randall. Please see the guide for more information.

There will also be workshops for children and adults and home-made cakes!

More information about Wandsworth Artists Open House

"Through" ⓒ Copyright Cate McRae 2010
(9.5" square fibre-based print, split selenium-toned)

'Points of View' Exhibition at the British Library : capturing the nineteenth century in photographs

I just managed to catch the end of the 'Points of View exhibition at the British Library. The exhibition is billed as “capturing the nineteenth century in photographs”. The Financial Times is quoted on the British Library information as describing it as “An exhibition that signals the welcome public debut of one of the world’s great photographic Collections.”

From a technical standpoint, the exhibition certainly does capture the nineteenth century in photographic terms and I did enjoy, for example, the video on how to make calotypes. It was also fun to try out an original magic lantern and slides. So as a technical history it was interesting – although I wondered if it would be so easy to grasp or take in if you didn't already have a reasonable knowledge of the processes involved. I did hear, also, several complaints as I went through the exhibition about it being too much centred on the technical side of things and not enough about social context, or further contextual details of the photographs.

Certainly, it was a bit of a whistle-stop tour. There was not too much detail on any of the 'themes' or the photographers apart from one or two – for example, Peter Henry Emmerson was very well represented (which I enjoyed) whereas there was only one photograph from Robert Adamson, perhaps because his work resides mainly in Scotland, at the University of St Andrews (as well as George Eastman House) rather than the in the British Library – in fact I had the feeling of many omissions, many of whom appear to be women photographers of the period, including Julia Margaret Cameron. So some very well known photographers were not represented at all, or very briefly, due to the limitations of the Library Collection (and possibly also due to curator choices). Perhaps not quite as many 'points of view', then, as there might have been.

In some ways this exhibition does “capture the nineteenth century”: it's preoccupations, (some more benign than others) it's prejudices and its hypocrisies. The sense of leisure that many early photographers enjoyed, the desire to collect and classify, (people as well as objects), colonial expansion. Views of “the Empire” were very well represented, reflecting the priorities of the age, inevitably I suppose. There was much less of the beginnings of documentary work as expressed in the work of Thomas Annan, for example, and his portrayal of Glasgow tenements in the later decades of the nineteenth century. In fact, I wonder if there is just too much missing for this collection to be described as “one of the world's great photographic Collections” unless there is a fair bit more in the Collection itself than was on display.

I did enjoy the exhibition but I came away longing for the next era, the one that is alluded to in the closing stages of the exhibition – the world of the Kodak box camera, of photography made more and more widely available, unrestricted to the leisured and wealthy on the one hand, or the artisan on the other – and despite the fun and fascination, and occasional glimpses of something deeper, there is ultimately a suffocating feel to this exhibition, both in subject matter and in the very role of photography, which left me grateful for the movements in the early part of the twentieth century which would both reflect and inform changing social attitudes.

However, I'm glad I went. There are a few days left to catch it (closes Sunday 7 March)...and it's free.

Points of View - The British Library

All content ⓒ Cate McRae 2010

Christmas 2009

A handful of photos from Chrismas Eve
over Christmas my mother was very unwell
~ a quiet time, and still; the first Christmas with snow for a long while

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae