The 4th edition of the Jerwood/Photoworks Award features two photographers whose work, though very different in style and content, wrestles with questions of identity and belonging – making space for the unheard and unseen, writes Madeleine Kelly.
Heather Agyepong’s ego death was inspired by Carl Jung’s idea of ‘The Shadow’. Jung argued that every person had a shadow self-comprised of the qualities and attributes deemed inappropriate by one’s community. To create her work, Agyepong delved deep into her shadow, identifying six characters which her photographs confront and console. Agyepong’s
photos use double exposure to show how these shadow selves exist just out of reach of her conscious mind, surfacing for a moment and disappearing again. The blue hues of the images (Agyepong took Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue as inspiration) add to this slippery effect, as do the gauzy installations in the middle of the room. The result is characters who appear constantly shifting, always just beyond reach, just beyond comprehension.
Meanwhile, Joanna Coates’ The Lie of the Land, though also a personal journey, takes its material not from the individual’s internal relationships, but the individual’s relationship to other individuals and in turn the land that supports them. The Lie of the Land explores the social history of rural North East England from the perspective of the working class women whose stories and toil often go unseen. Coates collaborated with twelve women who identify as working class in order to create this exhibition and the traditional documentary photography she uses unobtrusively gives these women space to define themselves beyond the lens. This is aided by the inclusion of a sound piece in which the women name themselves ‘Mother, miner, miner’s wife, meanderer…’ and accompanying short film placing the women at work within the landscape. Coates’ also provides two diaries in which participants alternate between describing the effects of the influx of wealthy people to rural areas and wrestling with questions of class and self-definition. The resulting exhibition is a strong and tender portrait of a landscape at last in conversation with the people who shape it.
Both artists have provided compelling and compassionate installations charged with anger and joy. Agyepong’s work pulls you in and pushes you out, an effect that occasionally seems accidental, but it is nevertheless rich. Coates, however, is the standout. Her work makes a place for a group who are frequently made invisible by our rural narratives, who are pushed out by a bucolic obsession with the land that conveniently forgets the people who rely on it. Her work exists not just as a protest against art and policies that forget these women but a love letter to their survival in spite of this.
Jerwood Space, 171 Union Street, London, SE1 0LN until 10 Dec 2022.
Times: Wednesday – Saturday: 11am – 6pm
https://jerwoodarts.org/
