Zarina Bhimji
10 May - 06 Jun 2006
ZARINA BHIMJI
Zarina Bhimji (born Uganda, 1963) is an important international artist whose poignant photographic images and ethically engaged artworks have been shown in museums worldwide. For her first exhibition at Haunch of Venison, Bhimji will present a new series of photographs made between 1998 and 2006.
Zarina Bhimji works in a wide range of media including installation, photography, film and sound. Since the early 1990s Bhimji has been interested in exploring systems of power and institutions. For example, for a project at Harewood House and the Alhambra in 1998, she researched seventeenth century newspaper advertisements for young black boys as servants. The resulting photographs of garden spaces explored historical situations where privileged colonial pleasure was sustained by violence, and accompanied by sexual desire.
The locations of these new large-format colour photographs were very carefully selected, and Bhimji reacted to the specific place and its environment, its scents and sounds, painstakingly composing beautiful and evocative images. In particular the works are concerned with the quality of light, and with the poetry of texture and resonant details. For example in Spider Score, a tree stands in front of power lines and a derelict building. When the viewer looks closely at the branches of the tree they see man-made power lines are juxtaposed with the spiders own lined webs. In other works such as Forgotten Us, she focuses on representing an institutional space. Bhimji removes all human figures from these works to leave the locations where the photographs were made, and their narrative, open-ended. While the works were made in Uganda, they do not address a specific political and historical situation, rather they are an intuitive response influenced by the 'emotional cargo' the artist brought to the sites. The carefully selected everyday objects and spaces with their traces of human presence evoke universal feelings of grief, love, vulnerability, spirituality and loss, and the prevalence of violence.
Zarina Bhimji studied at Goldsmiths College from 1983-86 and at the Slade School of Art from 1987-89, and lives and works in London. She has exhibited extensively internationally, and recent solo shows include Matrix, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, USA (2003) and Art Now, Tate Britain, London (2003). She has also shown at numerous group exhibitions including Snap Judgements, International Centre of Photography, New York (2006), Fault Lines, Venice Biennale (2003), and Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002). Bhimji was a DAAD fellow in Berlin in Germany in 2002 - 2003, and received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 1999. In June 2006 she will participate in the 15th Sydney Biennale.
For further information, full biography and press images please contact:
Calum Sutton. Call +44 (0) 20 7495 5050 or email: calum@haunchofvenison.com
Zarina Bhimji (born Uganda, 1963) is an important international artist whose poignant photographic images and ethically engaged artworks have been shown in museums worldwide. For her first exhibition at Haunch of Venison, Bhimji will present a new series of photographs made between 1998 and 2006.
Zarina Bhimji works in a wide range of media including installation, photography, film and sound. Since the early 1990s Bhimji has been interested in exploring systems of power and institutions. For example, for a project at Harewood House and the Alhambra in 1998, she researched seventeenth century newspaper advertisements for young black boys as servants. The resulting photographs of garden spaces explored historical situations where privileged colonial pleasure was sustained by violence, and accompanied by sexual desire.
The locations of these new large-format colour photographs were very carefully selected, and Bhimji reacted to the specific place and its environment, its scents and sounds, painstakingly composing beautiful and evocative images. In particular the works are concerned with the quality of light, and with the poetry of texture and resonant details. For example in Spider Score, a tree stands in front of power lines and a derelict building. When the viewer looks closely at the branches of the tree they see man-made power lines are juxtaposed with the spiders own lined webs. In other works such as Forgotten Us, she focuses on representing an institutional space. Bhimji removes all human figures from these works to leave the locations where the photographs were made, and their narrative, open-ended. While the works were made in Uganda, they do not address a specific political and historical situation, rather they are an intuitive response influenced by the 'emotional cargo' the artist brought to the sites. The carefully selected everyday objects and spaces with their traces of human presence evoke universal feelings of grief, love, vulnerability, spirituality and loss, and the prevalence of violence.
Zarina Bhimji studied at Goldsmiths College from 1983-86 and at the Slade School of Art from 1987-89, and lives and works in London. She has exhibited extensively internationally, and recent solo shows include Matrix, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, USA (2003) and Art Now, Tate Britain, London (2003). She has also shown at numerous group exhibitions including Snap Judgements, International Centre of Photography, New York (2006), Fault Lines, Venice Biennale (2003), and Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002). Bhimji was a DAAD fellow in Berlin in Germany in 2002 - 2003, and received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award in 1999. In June 2006 she will participate in the 15th Sydney Biennale.
For further information, full biography and press images please contact:
Calum Sutton. Call +44 (0) 20 7495 5050 or email: calum@haunchofvenison.com