Rowan Lear | Marie Smith | Joshua Bilton | Eugenie Shinkle | Hannah Fletcher | Jackson Whitefield | among others

Photo50 is London Art Fair’s annual exhibition of contemporary photography, providing a critical forum for examining some of the most distinguishing elements of current photographic practice.

Guest curated each year, it highlights a timely theme in current photography and adds a space and context to the photography presented by galleries at the Fair.

PHOTO50 2024, Curated by Revolv Collective

Grafting: The Land and the Artist

Revolv Collective is delighted to present Grafting: The Land and the Artist at Photo50, London Art Fair, 2024. Centred in expanded photographic practice, the collection of works by early and mid-career artists will explore the subject of labour and its diverse representations within the context of the land. In the exhibition, labour will be contextualised from a variety of positions to question our understanding and engagement with the land as a site of work, resistance, action, co-dependence, regeneration and communion. Echoing the horticultural technique whereby two plants are joined in order to grow together, these artists propose an ethos of entanglement, a space for contemplation and learning about the world, its complex systems and ecologies. The accompanying talks programme, Grafting, will expand the exhibition, highlighting process, materiality, sustainability, pedagogy, as modalities of labour within artistic practices borne through the land.

Selected works include Eugénie Shinkle’s Ideal City (Somebody Else’s Landscape) which rebuilds sections of four paintings by JMW Turner as a way of reflecting on the sense of culture shock and claustrophobia Shinkle experienced upon moving to London from Canada in 1997. The resulting images of London’s streets were used as individual ‘pixels’ to rebuild the enlarged sections of four different c19th landscape paintings by JMW Turner.

The exhibition will also include several works by British artist Jackson Whitefield such as Imprint I, which was created by embedding steel structures in the earth, left to be imprinted by the elements over the course of three months where after the objects were removed, etched onto paper and photographed.

Meanwhile Joshua Bilton’s Clay Cast of Two Hands Touching presents an organic clay sculpture housing a direct reproduction of two hands in contact. The photograph of this object adds “a second layer of representation” and “frees it from its original reference” (Rodrigo Orrantia, On Touch (or the impossibility of touch) 2020).

Photo50 is London Art Fair’s annual exhibition of contemporary photography, providing a critical forum for examining some of the most distinguishing elements of current photographic practice. Guest curated each year, it highlights a timely theme in current photography and adds a space and context to the photography presented by galleries at the Fair. Secure your tickets today and join us at the Business Design Centre January 17-21 to discover Photo50 2024.
Photo50 2024