Young artists test the limits of photography at Foam Talent’s London show
![Painting of a street having painted wall](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vkPEJTiGQHsDBMr5uWqpyd-415-80.jpg)
What form can a photograph take in 2017? Don’t expect just pictures on walls. ‘Every year we are again very curious to see how young talents are experimenting with photography on the very edges of the medium,’ says Foam Talent curator Mirjam Kooiman.
Now, Foam has arrived in London to show us photographs not as we know them: camera-less pictures, 3D objects, installations, wallpapers, lightboxes, beamers and projections are among just some of the formats on show at their showcase of 24 artists at Beaconsfield Gallery in Vauxhall.
As well as playing with the physical form of photography, these artists also dismantle its function in relation to places, people space, and time. Among the young photographers (they’re all under the age of 35) carving out new ways of seeing is South African artist Nico Krijno, a sculptor and photographer, who’s work is ‘sculptural in its construction of the very image itself’, Kooiman explains. His Sculpture Studies — part of his selected series Fabricated to be Photographed — gently mock both artistic media, assemblages made out of every day detritus, posing proudly for the camera.
[Untitled, 2012-14, by Samuel Gratacap, from the series Empire
Editing and presentation are also the focus of British artist Felicity Hammond. To create Capitol Growth (2015) she took photos of photos — real estate ads, renderings and architectural plans for luxury living — creating a kind of digital impasto which she manipulates with software and prints again on a large-scale, fashioning them into installations.
Where some photographers connect us to reality by complicating our viewing experience, others use documentary methods but distance us from what we think we know: Mexican photographer Sofia Ayarzagoitia almost exclusively shoots people and places in her hometown of Monterrey — but the works are more of self-portrait than a story about what happens in front of the camera.
In parallel, award-winning Instagram star Juno Calypso presents photographs of herself, taken in a love hotel in the US (designed for couples), reflecting more on universal ideals of romance, female fantasy and the industry of love than they reveal about the woman who looks at herself in the mirror.
This, Foam suggests, represents what photography is now: a fusion of techniques, an atmosphere of real and hyperreal, where documentary is fiction and fantasy is truth.
Lucas, by Stefanie Moshammer, 2016, from the series Land of Black Milk
Mbagne, by Sofia Ayarzagoitia, 2016
Untitled, by Jack Davison, 2013, from the series 26 States
15-5-2015, 13.02:46, by Andrejs Strokins, from the series Cosmic Sadness
Vogue Italia November 2014 (Micheal Baumgarten, Elisa Zaccanti, Enrica Ponzellini, Angelo Seminara, Laura Dominique) from the series Pieces of Me, by Louise Parker, 2015
INFORMATION
‘Foam Talent’ is on view until 18 June 2017. For more information, visit the Foam website
ADDRESS
Beaconsfield
22 Newport Street
London SE11 6AY
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
‘Mental health, motherhood and class’: Hannah Perry’s dynamic installation at Baltic
Hannah Perry's exhibition ’Manual Labour’ is on show at Baltic in Gateshead, UK, a five-part installation drawing parallels between motherhood and factory work
By Emily Steer Published
-
Francis Alÿs plots child play around the world at the Barbican
In Francis Alÿs' exhibition ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, the artist explores the universality of play, even in challenging situations
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
At Glastonbury’s Shangri-La, activism and innovation meet
Glastonbury’s south-east corner is known for its after-dark entertainment but by day, there is a different story to tell
By Rhian Daly Published
-
‘I am almost an anti-sculptor’: Dominique White on her Whitechapel Max Mara Art Prize show
The artist mines the ocean to explore Afrofuturism in ‘Deadweight’, opening at London’s Whitechapel and detailed in a new film
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Remembering Rusty Egan's Blitz Club: a place to 'avoid the mob and the homophobes', where the New Romantics were born
As he releases new vinyl boxset, 'Blitzed!', Wallpaper* meets DJ Rusty Egan to talk about London's scene-building Blitz club – the antidote to the late 70s punk scene and a hot-bed of experimental fashion
By Craig McLean Published
-
Suzannah Pettigrew's 'tender and ghostly' new show at Surrealist photographer Lee Miller's former home in East Sussex
London-based artist Suzannah Pettigrew's photographic stills create a snapshot of her Sussex coast childhood, conjuring up a hallucinatory world of memory
By Mary Cleary Published
-
The body, pleasure and play: Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland united in London
Tom of Finland’s homoeroticism meets Beryl Cook’s female-oriented camp as Studio Voltaire unites work by the two artists in a London exhibition
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Zanele Muholi celebrates South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in LA and London
Zanele Muholi's portraits and sculptures are currently on show at Southern Guild Los Angeles and the Tate Modern, London
By Hannah Silver Published