Jem Southam: The Moth. Talk & Book Signing, Wed 31 Oct, 18.30 - 20.00

Please join us for an evening with photographer Jem Southam who is presenting his new photobook The Moth, published by Mack.

Jem will be in conversation about his work with fellow photographer Peter Fraser in our Cafe from 18.30, and will be signing copies of The Moth in the Bookshop from 19.30.

 

The Moth derives from one black-and-white picturethat Jem Southam made in about 1983: a solitary man standing on Gwithian beach in St Ives, Cornwall. From this singular, meditative moment, the book of otherwise unpeopled, colour photographs unravels like a succession of memories, drifting back and forth through time.

Over the course of 30 years, Southam intermittently returned to the west of Cornwall to explore a place steeped in marine and mining history, and in the mythology of Celtic saints who exiled to Cornish shores. His poetic sequence of images, inspired by the alliterative verse of the old English poems The Wanderer and The Seafarer, moves from vistas of meadows to water streams, forgotten homes and farm dogs awaiting their food. Now and then, Southam’s fluctuating current of pictures is punctuated by a sublime moment in the rural landscape, only to be eclipsed by the hazy memory of The Moth.

Jem Southam is a key figure in British landscape photography, working across twenty-five years. His work is included in many important collections including Rijksmuseum, Museum Folkwang, and the Yale Centre for British Art. He has been the subject of numerous solo shows including Tate St. Ives in 2004 and The Victoria & Albert Museum in 2006.

Welsh born photographer Peter Fraser is based in London. He had solo exhibitions among others at the Arnolfini, Bristol, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, The Photographers' Gallery, Tate St. Ives, and most recently his series Mathematics was shown at Camden Art Centre, London, and published several acclaimed photobooks.

 

Wed 31 Oct, 18.30 Talk in the Cafe, followed by a Book Signing in the Bookshop.

Free event, no Booking.

 

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