—Introduction

BayArt

25 May – 21 June

Lure is a major exhibition of new work by Helen Sear. One of Wales’ most important and insightful artists, Sear’s practice can be characterised by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the natural world and the startling beauty of her work. From seemingly simple subjects – a frozen pond, straw bales in a field, wild flowers – Sear makes artworks of great power that explore ideas of seeing and perception.

Image: Pastoral Monument 6, Dacus Carota, 2012 © Helen Sear

Sunday 26 May 2013, 11am – 5pm 

Cinema 1, Chapter

BOOK NOW

This event will open up creative dialogue and enquiry into documentary and art photography publishing today, with a lively programme of presentations and panel discussions. Bringing together photographers, publishers and other industry specialists, debate will centre around shifts in publishing as practice; the mechanisms of production and distribution; legacies, contexts and considering exhibitions of photobooks. Ken Grant will also be back by popular demand presenting new 5 minute Book Reviews.

Ticket price includes tea and coffee and a packed lunch.

Speakers: Ken Grant (University of South Wales), Harry Hardie (HERE Press), Gordon MacDonald (GOST Books), Christiane Monarchi (Chair), Rodrigo Orrantia (Lucid-ly), Emmanuelle Waeckerle (the bookRoom), Thijs groot Wassink (Wassink/Lundgren) and more TBA.

Chapter

Maurizio Anzeri’s first solo exhibition in Wales features newly commissioned and previously unseen works, alongside a selection of his critically acclaimed “photo-sculptural” pieces.

Anzeri uses found photographs and embroidery to create subtly sculptural pieces in which strangers are given new identities; complex and mysterious. Anzeri sees photographic portraits as landscapes, exploring them in order to layer them with his own maps or orientation to invent what he describes as “other possible evolutionary dimensions for the people pictured”. Labyrinths of forms and colours create intriguing geographies of faces, histories and souls with eyes that stare enigmatically from the centre of their ‘masks’. Alongside this established practice, Anzeri will show new works that utilise embroidery and personal photography to create imagined or psychological space; private reality that becomes public fantasy.

Anzeri’s interest in the sculptural form, the body and identity, gender and psychological boundaries also extends to a body of morphologic sculptural pieces that are made from synthetic hair. Taking inspiration from multiple sources – from Virginia Wolfe’s Mrs Dalloway to totemic cultures, 17^th century Versailles and haute couture fashion – the installations involve the creation of a series of sculptures – each representing a different personality – that hover somewhere between theatre and fetish.

Image: Portrait Yellow, 2012. Embroidery on photo, 23.5 x 18cm. © Maurizio Anzeri

The turn of the century brought a renewed interest and confidence in constructing high-rise developments in a large majority of the world’s major cities. It has become the corporate building type for an increasingly global industry and architecture. High-rise examines the sociopolitical, architectural and visual discourse surrounding these constructions using a combination of both interior and exterior still and moving imagery. Through a number of differing strategies, the work critiques these environments, questions their relationship to the city below, addresses ideas of representation and spectatorship, and explores the discourse surrounding notions of power within the contemporary urban landscape.

A Ffotogallery project in partnership with the Architecture Centre, Bristol and the Royal National Theatre, London. Supported by Arts Council England, eCPR (The European Centre for Photographic Research) and the University of Wales, Newport.

The exhibition is showing 1 – 27 May 2013 at Tramshed.

For more video content visit Remote Access.

Tramshed

1 May – 27 May

The turn of the century brought a renewed interest and confidence in constructing high-rise developments in a large majority of the world’s major cities. It has become the corporate building type for an increasingly global industry and architecture. High-rise examines the sociopolitical, architectural and visual discourse surrounding these constructions using a combination of both interior and exterior still and moving imagery. Through a number of differing strategies, the work critiques these environments, questions their relationship to the city below, addresses ideas of representation and spectatorship, and explores the discourse surrounding notions of power within the contemporary urban landscape.

A Ffotogallery project in partnership with the Architecture Centre, Bristol and the Royal National Theatre, London. Supported by Arts Council England, eCPR (The European Centre for Photographic Research) and the University of Wales, Newport.

Image: High-rise (23^rd, Bar), 2007 © Peter Bobby

Wednesday 29 May, 5pm

Tramshed

Throughout May we have asked Cardiff residents and visitors to contribute to a series of unique online collages for ffotohive. Photographs have been taken at six designated sites known as ‘hives’ around the city, which were then tweeted and uploaded to become part of this ever-changing digital artwork capturing the city. The artwork is on show at the Tramshed for the last three days of the festival, and visitors will have an opportunity to take part in the project in the newly unveiled Tramshed hive.

The exhibition opening will feature a live soundtrack by musician Tom Raybould (Arc Vertiac).

single screen version

Chapter (Stiwdio)

1 May – 31 May

B O R T H is a film installation by the artist Gideon Koppel. It was filmed in the wild west Wales town of Borth – a curious and extraordinary place where the infinite horizon of the sea collides with a bricolage of architectures; where epic landscape is playfully juxtaposed with the intimacy of human gesture.

Following on from Koppel’s feature-length film Sleep Furiously – one of the most critically acclaimed British films of 2009 – this work travels along the blurred borders between documentary and fiction, to create a powerful dream-like and sensory world.

Exhibition presented by Ffotogallery in partnership with Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Project funded by Arts Council of Wales. Exhibition supported by Chapter.

Image: B O R T H, 2012 © Gideon Koppel

Sat 4 & Sun 5 May
The Cardiff Story, The Hayes

Sat 11 & Sun 12 May
Milkwood Gallery, Roath

The Pop Up Portrait Studio is a mobile, outdoor photography studio, offering everyone a free portrait session. The studio popped up alongside the Diffusion venues in Cardiff and you can see all 110 portraits that Kirsty has taken above. Participants can also pick up their free print at Cardiff Story where the work is being displayed as a temporary exhibition.

“It is much more than a photo booth. I photograph everyone that comes along. I love being surprised when someone that I might not have thought of photographing, stands in front of my camera, and all of a sudden I see something in them. If I can then capture that – I can make a good portrait.”

kirstymackay.wordpress.com

“There is nothing left to photograph”

Wednesday 29 May, 6.30pm

Fire Island, 25 Westgate Street, Cardiff CF10 1DD

Free

BOOK NOW

A series of free evening events will be held in the city, each dedicated to one of the Platform themes and led by prominent artists and thinkers. There will be space for discussion and reflection in an informal setting.

Ffotogallery

1 May – 7 June

In 2010 and 2011, Martins gained exclusive access to 20 power plants located across Portugal. Many were built between the 1950s and 1970s, a time of hopeful prospects for rapid economic growth and social change. The Time Machine records objects and spaces whose grand and progressive designs testify to the scope and ambition of the vision they were built to serve.

Martins’ photographs recall science-fiction and in an unavoidable field of nostalgia, characterise a suspended time; that of the modern. In recovering a past of exciting technological innovation and optimistic belief in the future, The Time Machine speaks not just about the generation of power but also of dreams and technological utopias.

This exhibition was funded by Fundação EDP and the international tour is supported by The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK branch) & Instituto Camões (Portugal).

Image: Fratel power station: machine hall, 2012 © Edgar Martins