artists collaborate for exhibition of experimental and expanded photography

Bringing together artists with a shared passion for ‘experimental and expanded’ photographic practices, Liquid Now is a group exhibition set to open at KIT FORM on November 13.

The diverse range of techniques on show includes film and digital photography, performance, installation, projection and moving image, through to alternative forms of image-making, from phytograms and cyanotypes to thermal prints.

The work selected uses these evocative processes to explore everything from temporal and spatial ambiguity to perception, spirituality, absence and presence, histories and dreams.

Light and sound, thrown and interrupted, KIT FORM (2024) – photo: Melanie Clifford

Claudia Pilsl is one of the featured artists, who will be showing work from her series Never the Same River. She considers the power of her art not to capture a moment in time, but rather as an organic and ever-evolving process: “To me photographs are like rivers that swell and change with each viewing,” she reflects.

“Whilst being looked at they are constantly reconstituting themselves as reflective fragments of past moments within a present context. Harbouring near invisible triggers that wreak havoc with linearity, they liquify time and release a stream of fleeting thoughts and memories within the here and now.

“The photographs explored within this series of cyanotypes were taken by my father at a family-gathering in Austria. Looking at my young self-picking grapes, I feel a connection to my oblique migrant roots that stretch to a warmer climate where wine grows easily.”

Never the Same River – photo: Claudia Pilsl

Other featured work from Liquid Now includes Sarah Rose Currie’s exploration of shadow, Melissa Edwards’ warped DSLR pinhole camera shots, Mars Saude’s distorted long exposure still images created “in relation to an autistic bodymind”, Melanie Clifford’s mixed media and time-lapse installation, and Deborah Weinreb’a archival photographs of early 1980s China.

In addition to the exhibition, there will be two specialist workshops running on the afternoon of November 14 and the morning of Friday 15, both for a suggested donation on the day.

Firstly, Sophie Sherwood from the Bristol Darkroom will be running a session on phytogram chemistry, in which chemigrams can be created and layered up using a range of techniques, including lumen printing. And then a site-specific workshop led by Deborah Weinreb will invite participants to create a series of ‘photographs’ capturing moments of a few seconds (longer than the usual snapshot), before editing these into abstract film documents.

China: Around and About 1984 – photo: Deborah Weinreb

Liquid Now: Experimental & Expanded Photography Exhibition opens at KIT FORM on November 13 at 6-8pm, and continues from 11am-6pm daily until November 17.

For more information including the full programme of workshops, visit www.beefbristol.org. There is a suggested £10 cash donation for all workshops.

Main photo: Sarah Rose Currie (Of Shadows)

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