Malcolm Glover: INDIA
Thursday 29 August – Monday 30 September 2019
SONY DSC
Pushka Ghats (2016).
Digital print on Hahnemuhle archival paper. Courtesy the artist.
Malcolm Glover: INDIA
Thursday 29 August – Monday 30 September
Free entry
A Wave of Dreams Arts Lab presents INDIA an exhibition of large scale digital panoramic photographic art works by Malcolm Glover and Breathe, a video portraiture installation, depicting Indian glass workers within the chaotic environment of their workplace, by Malcolm Glover and glass artist, Chris Bird-Jones.
This series of work was made over a 10-year period during Glover’s travels in India. Much of the imagery in the panoramics concerns the significance of water in Indian society, religion and culture; as well as the national obsession with railways.
Glover’s digital technique is as original as it is innovative. The prints comprise multiple images taken over a 3 to 4-day period, which are then seamlessly merged together to create a single image. These constructed panoramics are a form of static tracking shot, giving the impression of a cinematic experience.
The images are informed by Glover’s documentary sensibility. They are not collages but, rather, portrait-landscapes with a narrative and social voice.
Traditionally the photograph has trapped the viewer in one perspective and one moment of time – these works challenge these restrictions.
In Breathe (2018) a moving element is introduced in a series of video portraits of Indian glass workers.
Still from Breathe courtesy the artists
Breathe is the result of Glover’s collaboration with prize-winning glass artist, Chris Bird-Jones, a Creative Wales Ambassador. She invited Glover to work alongside her as she researched glass making in Firozabad, the heart of the glass industry in Uttar Pradesh, India. The two artists spent weeks in the chaotic (and highly dangerous) environment of the glass factories. The intention initially was to document the glass industry and its workers, however it soon became clear to both artists that they could make a more penetrating piece of work. The resulting video installation is a collection of portraits, with the subject of each standing still before a backdrop of furnaces, intense heat, cacophonous noise, and the frenzied pace of fellow workers undertaking their tasks with almost choreographic precision. The work celebrates the triumph of the individual and the subjects exude a strange serenity in compositions that are at times almost biblical, at others comical, and always deeply moving. As Bird-Jones puts it, “For us, the factories became a metaphor for India and her people…this is what we sought to convey in the work.”
Generously supported by the India Wales Fund
Preview and interview with Malcolm Glover from the Hastings Independent
Review of INDIA by Lauris Morgan-Griffiths
Malcolm Glover’s photographs strike me as an artistic body of work because his photographic approach includes psychological perception and intimacy. These qualities lift his pictures out of the sphere of journalism and place them among the best artistic work being done in Britain today.
Raghubir Singh, ICI photography awards, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
Malcolm Glover’s panoramics are absolutely stunning…
John Cole, Hastings Independent
About Malcolm Glover
Malcolm Glover is a prize-winning international photographic artist, whose work is collected and has been widely published and exhibited. Following a successful career as a documentary photographer he has, more recently, diversified into creative digital works and video portraiture.
For more information about Malcom Glover: malcolmglover.co.uk
For more information about Chris Bird-Jones: www.chris-bird-jones.co.uk