Objects of Life – An Exhibition of Still Life Photography

Title : Of All Likenesses
Date : 2012

My photographic practice consistently questions the relationship between the sculptural and the photographic. Using found, familiar objects I create ephemeral installations and scenarios for my picture making exploring how one medium is implicated in the analysis and creative redefinition of the other.

Information: Alison Bettles Website | @alisonbettles

Title : Momento Mori

From the Floracide: series. This picture is based on roadside Catholic shrines – which are a form of living Vanitas. I remember seeing shrines all along the roads of Southern Europe as a child, and wondering who put them there and why? They evoke melancholy and nostalgia. The flowers in the shrines were always withered and dead. I let the dahlias and sunflowers die, as all cut flowers do, then added some other dying flowers, fairies, feathers and fantasy beliefs, which somehow control peoples short lives. Votive beeswax candles and clockwork death. These are frozen images of decay.

Information: Richard Butchins Website  |  @thewitheredhand

Title : Foeniculum Vulgare purpureum from Fairlight End Garden
Date : 2016

This fennel plant was taken inside from my garden, Fairlight End in Pett, just outside Hastings, to photograph. The process of capturing the fennel, with intense lighting, lead to the accelerated death of the plant. The result is a capturing of life at the moment it is coming to an end, suggesting ideas surrounding still life as a form-vanitas or nature morte-and photography as a medium.

Information: Robin Hutt Website  |  @robinlahutt

Title : Lens on Paper
Date : 2021

This still life photograph is from my 2021 series The Aesthetics of Absence in which they act as an inner voice or commentary on atmospheres found in the other pictures of domestic interiors, the built environment and beyond.

Information: Alexander Brattell Website | @alexanderbrattell

Title : Discarded Disregarded Degraded
Date : 2021

I want to convey with my images is that we all create waste and are collectively responsible. The mood is a subtle reminder of the reality and scale of our consumerism. In each sequence of images, blurring was employed as the visual language to portray a physical timeline from discarded waste to decay. Just as if the waste were buried in the landfill, each triptych depicts the gradual degradation from freshly discarded waste on the surface, through to the intermediate breakdown in the subsoil, and down to the virtually obscured remains in the bedrock.

The narrative can be seen from two perspectives: vertically, illustrating a gradual dematerialisation, and horizontally, depicting the different strata. The overall effect is to portray a whole swathe of contamination.

Information: Chris Coombes Website | @chriscoombesphotography.co.uk

Title : Un Morte
Date : 2019

Amanda Jobson is an award-winning visual artist and community worker. Using analogue photography, camera less alternative printing, her practice looks upon our natural environment. Having spent three years creating a woodland community garden for young people and families, growing food for wellbeing and food poverty. Amanda has managed community and artist led projects and commissions with support from arts council UK, The National Lottery Fund and Sussex Community Foundation.

Information: Amanda Jobson Website  |  @amanda_jobson