notton gallery, Notton, notton art, Delehag, jamie gallagher, alba urquia, Marzena ablewska-Lech, Vikram kushwah

Vikram Kushwah had never visited the school where his father had thought for 35 years. Only when Vikram told his father that he wanted to do a photo story before his father retired the following year did he begrudgingly arrange a visit. 

 

I am honoured to be showing Vikram Kushwah’s deeply personal photographic project ‘The Education I Never Had’ as a feature presentation at Photo London in May. The Education I Never Had is a homage to Kushwah’s father, the school where he worked and the sacrifices he made to provide an alternative path for his son. 

This series of portraits were taken using the 19th century wet plate collodion photographic process, using the artist's hand-built camera. Named by the artist as the 'Hurricane' the camera was made from wood salvaged from fallen trees after the great storm of 1987.

Being so large the camera always attracted much attention especially at the festivals and events where the artist would photograph willing subjects. One such individual happened to tour with the British rock band Radiohead. The band were looking for a photographer and photographic process that fitted both their aesthetic and that of their forthcoming album, The King of Limbs; a tribute album to a thousand-year-old oak tree. The ancient English Woodland has been a photographic subject for Sebastian for many years, so he was a natural fit for the band for this project. A few weeks later, armed with the Hurricane, he found himself at their studio in Oxfordshire.

Known for his use of the physicality of paint to explore the border between abstraction and figuration Gallagher has turned to AI to further explore the human condition.

From previously harvesting physical elements of paintings by hand to form anatomical sculptures, Gallagher has now ventured into a fresh and innovative form of application, producing photographic portraits of AI realised anatomic sculptures using his own existing paintings as learning recourses for the algorithm.

These visual monologues can be considered as a new form of sketchbook, providing a new path for reflection, introspection and consideration of the intricate balance between the sublime and the brutal.