In 2002, Nigel Green was granted
unprecedented access to the interior of Dungeness 'B', one
of the two nuclear power stations operating from the site
in
Dungeness. The resulting work accommodates a fundamental ambiguity.
While he is sensitive to the unique environment at Dungeness — its
fragility
and vulnerability — and aware of the damaging
absurdity that led to building the stations on such an unstable
site, Green is also drawn to the stations' peculiar form of
grandeur, both banal and elegant, and to the supremely sophisticated
levels of human endeavour they undoubtedly represent.
The exhibition combines large scale colour photographs with
an 'archive' of small reprocessed photographic fragments. It
is a response to both the real, often awe-inspiring scale and
complexity of the station's spaces, and to what might be called
its 'psychological' power; the way it rests in the imagination
and memory. The work also dwells on the station's uneasy presence
in this elemental landscape, looming over fisherman's huts
and a nature reserve
that protects one of the most important
and sensitive coastal environments
in Europe.
Dungeness is commissioned by Photoworks and includes a hardback
book priced at £17.95 with a specially commissioned essay
by The Guardian's architecture critic Jonathan Glancey.
Naglaa Walker’s artistic practice
is informed by her scientific background. Before taking an
MA in Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art, she
graduated as a physicist and worked briefly in the field. In
her work, Walker presents science not as instructive, infallible
authority but as an object of enquiry and speculation, relevant
to day-to-day life. In 2003 she was awarded
a Jerwood Photography
Prize for her work.
In Physical Sites she presents a series of images series
taken in the physics department of the University of California
on the American West Coast. Additionally, through abstraction,
documentation and the use of diagrammatic and textual pieces,
the work engages with the scientific environment, rendering
an intuitive sense rather than a literal interpretation of
physics, and thus challenges preconceptions about science and
its accessibility. Exploring the boundaries which support the
knowledge/power relationship and the idiosyncrasies of the
scientific experience, her work aims to create new,
cross-disciplinary
understandings, and contest established responses.
Walker’s book On Physics is being published by Dewi
Lewis Publishing in Autumn 2004, and includes specially commissioned
essays by John Gribbin, scientist and award-winning author
of many popular science books, and Sacha Craddock, leading
art critic, writer and curator, who provides a context within
which to consider and evaluate Walker’s work. |