Tea's Times

The Tea’s Times student and staff exhibition took place in Camberwell Space at Camberwell College of Arts from the 27th of November to the 3rd of December 2023. As a starting place for the research of the Museum Arts Fellowship, it was conceived as a way to open discussion around relationships between tea and photography and provide the opportunity to share research processes between staff and students of Fine Art Photography at the college.

Leading into the exhibition was a short intensive research phase. Participants were initially invited to visit and respond to the Horniman’s 茶, चाय, Tea exhibition in a discussion with the curator, Navjot Mangat. Staff also visited the Horniman’s Collection Archive to view selected tea related objects ranging from lantern slides to teapots. Melanie King was invited to speak to participants about her environmental photographic practice and introduce a workshop on toning cyanotypes with tea. Artists Lydia Dique and Josef Konczak ran workshops on using tea to develop film, and participants were invited to take part in discussions and tutorials about their artworks in process.

The exhibition was conceived as a shared project. Curation, publicity, installation and organisation were collaboratively decided amongst the participants. The project also generated collaborations within artworks by Lydia Dique and Chelsea Coats, Maia Conran and Cerys Roberts, Amelia Butterworth, India Pears, Aurora Karati and Beckett Guilmaraes-Tolley, Haohao Zhang and Shengu Chen, Cietisoo Nguyen and Leonara Peace. It made other spaces for social sharing in the tea’s shared by Katarína Čačíková, and by Ruilin Li, and in the participatory artworks by Yutong Wang and Synchar Pde.

Parts of this exhibition were then remade at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in the Take Over Space of the 茶, चाय, Tea Exhibition

• https://www.horniman.ac.uk/event/tea-mem...
• https://www.horniman.ac.uk/event/cha-cha...
• https://www.horniman.ac.uk/project/tea/
• https://photoresearch.cargo.site