Englisheritage: a photographic installation

‘Englisheritage’ was a photographic installation at the Ashley Gardens gallery, London. The installation of eleven iconic portraits of the fashion collection ‘Lord Lucan vs. Liberace,’ by graduate designer Quentin Mackay was integrated with seven sublime landscapes of council estates, which suggested an ironic notion of a future British urban aristocracy residing in expensive ex-council properties of Bethnal Green, East London.

Research processes involved meeting with the designer in the mid to final stages of design production. Discussions around the main theme concluded in art directing the photography within the environment of where the collection was to be viewed as a catwalk presentation. Subjects were isolated against an ‘English Racing Green’ colour background and photographed in natural daylight. The subjects were recorded to intentionally communicate dual identities that defined a hypothesis of an extended class and sub-cultural interjection, a merging of social and geographical trends around the borders of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, London.

Eighteenth century English artists including Constable, JW Turner, Stubbs and Gainsborough inspired the photography, fashioned in an idiosyncratic method that romanticised the urban landscapes and portraits, fathoming the aspirations of the English country estate with the expressive realism of the English council estate.

Utilising the gallery’s environment, the sequencing of photographs was purposefully displayed so as to interject portrait and landscape images between large, Victorian sash windows that overlooked the Bethnal Green Road. This mode allowed the windows themselves to represent real landscapes and therefore become part of the visual narrative.

The exhibition title, produced as an amalgamation of a traditional English typographic script and an anonymous graffiti ‘tag,’ in correlation with the photographic work, was a social comment about the delineation of English society and the burgeoning of one culture upon another.

Current Research
My photographic work is united by an exploration of cultural integration, inspired by autobiographical elements and combined with an analysis of the broader culture within metropolitan life.

The politics of integration are one of the essential themes of my work. Not born in this country, and not being English, I explore ideas of identity and culture from an introspective viewpoint of being an immigrant. I am fascinated in the multiplicity of the environment I live in, and in response, I am able to create fictitious characters and scenarios based around elements of truth and perception.

These outcomes presented, highlight themes that will inform forthcoming research which will delve deeper into the ideas of identity, diversity, class, and the symbiosis of cultures.

• http://www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/34519.htm