REVIEW: HASTINGS ARTS FORUM.

AN ANTHOLOGY. AF1.
A SENSE OF PLACE. AF2.

Photography in Hastings & St Leonards continues its ascent with a pair of worthwhile exhibitions currently showing in both galleries of Hastings Arts Forum until 26th April.

In AF1, “An Anthology” shows work by a dozen photographers, all participants on a recent course at the University of Brighton's Media Enterprise Centre in Hastings led by Grace Lau. In AF2 “A Sense Of Place” brings together two friends and neighbours who at first glance share a similar disposition but whose concerns are, upon examination, distinct but parallel.

“An Anthology”, curated by Andrew Moran, pulls off the neat trick of making unity from a potentially baffling diversity. Petra Landers' concrete geometries play against Lin Gregory's 'slow photography' seascapes, both making effective use of found and subtle colour. Charles Coussens' abstracts of waste are political in intention and also beautiful, referring to Keith Arnatt's 1980's rubbish tip pictures though with tighter tones and less figuration. Rose Biela's photographs of seaside shelters are fluent soliloquies on geometry and colour temperature whilst Nicole Zaaroura's photographed paper installations examine evidence of absence using an aesthetic reminiscent of Francis Bruguiere's inter-war abstractions.

Annette Barton's extreme close ups of coastal rocks reveal poetic geologies and seem to exude, oddly, a sense of smell while Sue Barnes revels in the season's botanics, inviting us to share her glee at this year's new Spring growth. Michael Lank's “Displaced” series of symbolist still lifes gives the nod to Max Ernst but with the textures of Joel Peter Witkin. Emma Bryant drily examines lost items in lush tones, tiny tragedies rescued into perfect little landscapes, delicate beside Barry Reid's neon-caressed brutalism (London's South Bank) which in turn proclaim certainty beside Julia Humphrys' “Anatomy of Fear” disquieting for its down on the ground point of view. Lucy Phillips' “You Are Here” documents a seemingly grim South Coast 1930's housing estate with a tender eye, stopping to extract finesse where thousands would simply pass on by.

In the exhibition “A Sense Of Place” both John Shanks and Mike Leale show vistas, vignettes and scenes, sparsely populated and brimming with implications. Both photographers play with shape in similar ways, in the proportion of the image perimeters and in the arrangement of space within those frames.
John Shanks presents interiors and exteriors; restaurants, museums, transport hubs, a conference centre. These are as stage sets, deceptively neutral arenas for our own projections to play in, but with an eeriness that comes from kinetic skies and viewpoints that take you closer, or leave you farther away, than you really think you want to be. Mike Leale's concerns overlap nicely, but his photographs are somehow built differently, the interaction of colour and form giving hints of a contained abstraction. The exhibition works beautifully as a unit, the differences between the two photographers seeming slight at first but profound upon inspection.

The production standards of both shows are high and in both technique is in the service of intent to good effect. Across the two galleries film and digital origination are freely interspersed but the printing is digital throughout. This printing technology has come of age and is now usually the most viable option making traditional craft printing techniques ever more exotic. “An Anthology” is a frameless show, the work floating free of the wall or mounted onto board or aluminium. “A Sense of Place” plays on its collaborative premise by using simple, traditional black frames and light matts throughout. Both treatments are pleasingly invisible, leaving only content to be considered.

Alex Brattell
alex@photohastings.org