Martin Newth: Re-view

'Re-View' brings together a selection of experimental works, made between 2008 and 2018, that explore the material nature of photography, evoking the historical roots of the photographic process as well as raising questions about the aesthetics of the medium in the 21st century. These photographic, video and sculptural installations explore and emphasize the materials, processes and apparatus of production. They are made using various means, including very long exposures and purpose-built camera obscuras.

Each of the works reveals something of the processes by which they were made, aiming for a closer, more immersive relationship with the object that is being recorded. 'Re-View' includes work made as a part of Newth’s Sentinel series, in which he used a spectacle lens to transform a Second World War pillbox at Tilbury into a camera obscura. The exhibition also includes works that were created using a large cardboard camera to photograph Arthur’s Stone, a Neolithic burial chamber in Herefordshire.

The resulting series of colour negatives set up a correspondence between the sculptural qualities of the camera and the raw materiality of the stone. Work from Newth’s current solo exhibition Rezension: Skulptur, Object, Apparat at the MEWO Kunsthalle in Germany, for which he constructed cameras to photograph a collection of late Gothic, limewood sculptures made between 1420 and 1495, will also be on view. Through his use of very specific hand-on processes that record the subjects in vivid, often red, negative hues, Newth’s work slows down the process of reading images and offers an engagement with the material nature of the photograph and the performance of its production.

• http://www.photofusion.org/exhibitions/m...