This exhibition showcases the work of four shortlisted artists selected for the Pavilion Commissions Programme 2007 which aims to offer exceptional, emerging UK-based photographers the opportunity to develop a new body of work.

Home Improvements by Millie Burton is a series of photographs and short films that documents ‘exiled’ domestic objects found at recycling centres within the UK. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the waste mountains that now exist are both frightening and pathetic creations of our own time. However, in their silent masses they present a challenge to our existence and way of life, whilst questioning our attachment and sense of value.

Lydia Goldblatt’s photographic series and short film, And The Word Was God, explores the ages at which religious ‘rites of passage’ rituals and ceremonies are performed, focusing on the moments from which children adopt forms of religious language, prayer and ritual. The work probes the encounter between the collective nature and identity of religious practice, and the individual who takes on these beliefs.

For Hetain Patel, unravelling the complexities that exist between the British born generation of which he isa part and the generation of immigrant Indians that are his family is ever present. In Kori Patels he explores how the culture and sensibilities of the Western world has impacted upon his family members, the legacy of an Indian mindset, cultural mannerisms and the way in which they reveal themselves.

In her series Per Pulverem Ad Astra, Eva Stenram has made negatives from NASA’s digital images of Mars and let these gather dust in her apartment before printing them. The resulting marked image is a combination of extreme distance and extreme proximity. There is a simultaneous gravitational pull towards the earth, to the dust around, and a pull upwards into space, away from the earth and towards the attraction – both physical and fantastical – of Mars.

The Selection Panel for the Pavilion Commissions Programme 2007 were: Ruth Haycock and Anna Reid, Pavilion; Greg Hobson, National Media Museum; Sophie Leighton, Victoria and Albert Museum; and Catherine Williams, Photofusion. Exhibition curated by Pavilion and Photofusion.

For further details about the Pavilion Commissions Programme visit:  www.pavilion.org.uk