KTcontemporary are delighted to present Achill by Linda Brownlee and
Fictionary by Holly McGlynn as part of the PhotoIreland Festival 2011.
www.photoireland.org
We are happy to announce that the production of Holly McGlynn's images is sponsored by Picture Bloc - www.picturebloc.com
Please join us for a private view on Friday 1st July from 7 - 9pm.
Exhibition continues until Thursday 28th July.
Linda Brownlee is a communications graduate of Dublin City University. Brownlee's photos have been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London, Host Gallery, Printspace, the Nottingham Museum and Art Gallery, and the Yinka Shonibare Space. She has also been commissioned by the Photographers Gallery in London. Her portrait, documentary and fashion work has featured in numerous publications such as Vogue, Dazed and Confused, the Guardian, Times and Telegraph Magazines.
Achill is Ireland's windy westernmost island; a naturally secluded place. Its sloping peaks rise above undulating fields of scrub trees and thick underbrush, brown bogs and mottled knolls, finally giving way to rock-strewn valleys, sheltered coves and the sea. The sky, receding into distant atmosphere or encroaching heavily over the land, deliberates and might at any moment spoil the calm. Linda Brownlee has been spending her August holidays in Achill amongst family and friends over the last 16 years. Captivated by the texture of its raw and unpredictable landscape, the series presented in Brownlee's work titled Achill, is the result of the photographic explorations she undertook with a group of local teenagers throughout the last two years. Photographed in their favourite spots, near their homes or sites chosen by Brownlee, these adolescent figures – resting or only hesitating within the camera's frame – draw the eye into and across the island's contours, revealing the shape of the land through the intimacy of their relationship to it. A tranquillity pervades Brownlee's photographs that, despite rain or wind, stems from a sense of belonging. Her careful images capture the moody portrait of a place.
Holly McGlynn has a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture and French from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A. in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmith's, University of London. She was selected in 2010 to exhibit solo at Matsu Photographer’s Gallery in London as well as being short-listed for the prestigious Deptford X Photography Project. Her work has been published in the Guardian, Vice Magazine, TimeOut, Film Ireland, Bellyflop Magazine, and GCN.
Fictionary - A photographic anthology of much and less loved characters from literary history. “Fictionary is a compendium of portraits reifying characters from literary history; characters that intrigued, frightened, and excited me and who I wanted to create a visual identity for, as well as characters that already hold firm footing in popular culture that I wanted to subvert and reinvent. Influences for this project have included the satire of Mikhail Bulgakov, Angela Cater’s marriage of fantasy and realism, classic fairy tales, and characters deeply entrenched in society’s imagination. My work is largely focused on identity, environment and performance and the correlation between those three. Fictionary brings another dimension to this triad, that of the puppeteer forcing established identities into new shoes and perverting any preconceived notions the spectator may have had of these characters.”
