9 March 2011
Emile Kelly has set up a pop-up portrait studio and project space, the International Portrait Gallery, which will be open Sat – Weds at Hotel Elephant, 77 – 85 Newington Causeway.
Through the space he is offering photographic portraits to the local community, free of charge and obligation, in the hope of establishing collaborative relationships with willing individuals.
These individuals will become the subjects of my photography-based work, which is concerned with globalisation and it's effects on community and identity.
‘My belief ,’ he says, ‘is that the International Portrait Gallery can become a site of dialogue between the SE1/SE17 community and myself, and that this is the ideal context for the production of a challenging and compelling work, containing a multiplicity of voices, with subjects participating in their representation.’
He has created a large scale, aerial photograph of the area which he will be writing and drawing onto in response to the stories told to him for the duration of the show. I will also experiment with letting other people write and draw on this image.
The end result will be a map that documents and layers some of the narratives, lives and experiences that define the area, but are intangible and could not be captured by the objective nature of a "normal" map
