Current Conflicts
This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.
Current Conflicts is an exhibition of new work by six photographers including OCA tutor Les Monaghan.
Here’s Les, on the exhibition themes: The exhibition aims to engage the public with a series of artists’ responses to ideas around modern warfare, in particular the West’s engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a very topical subject, through our own research and the work done at seminars we have found that the exhibition provides a forum for debate. We have discovered a public feeling that there is little alternative to thinking about war except within the parameters set out by the media. Concepts such as embedding and citizen journalism do not seem to have resulted in any increased knowledge, empathy or discussion. The artists are building towards two significant markers occurring in 2014; the pullout of NATO troops from Afghanistan and the centenary of the start of the First World War. One of the themes of Current Conflicts is the constant of war in human life. Others include masculinity and war, media representations (and misrepresentations), the aesthetics of war, and landscapes and war.
The exhibition will be in the Space 2 Gallery in Watford throughout September and October and on Saturday 7 September there will be an artists’ talk for the general public and a seminar for OCA students. We know from previous seminars that students get a great deal out of these opportunities. To reserve a free place email enquiries@oca-uk.com
The essay to inform the seminar is available to download here. [Please be aware that the images used to illustrate the essay may upset some readers].
Image Credit: Christopher Down from the series ‘Visions from Arcardia‘
[Current Conflicts features work by Matthew Andrew, Christopher Down, Richard Monje, Olivia Robinson, Jamie Simonds and Les Monaghan]
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“We have discovered a public feeling that there is little alternative to thinking about war except within the parameters set out by the media.”
Is not photography also media !?
Would like to have attended this day but shall be in Arles with other OCA-wallahs.
We should probably clarify that we mean the news media.
Sounds interesting…must try to get along there. Can’t make the 7th though.
Hopefully I can go to this, the seminar is an added bonus!
I would liked to have gone on the Study Visit as well but I’ll also be in Arles.
Is there any chance of hearing the talk in mid-September ? I too will be in Arles – as will 16 others. I see that all the contributors to this exhibition are either from the UK or USA. Is there any chance of including the work of those middle eastern photographers who are working in a war zone, like Issa Touma in Aleppo, Syria? Their perspective and experience would be vastly different from that of the photographers in this collective, but the work reflects what they, in a war zone, choose to photograph.
Hi Folks
We did appreciate when planning this study visit that it coincided with the Arles study visit, but we wanted to provide an alternative opportunity for those who couldn’t make the French visit. These two events are the first of the new academic year and there will be plenty of others in the coming year.
The image you use in this article is really powerful. It really makes me want to see the rest! As far as I have noticed, the Media (by this I mean the Mass Media), tend not to focus on this kind of presentation of war – the image suggests the feelings of isolation and inward turned emotion that I associate with the WWI poets. So it is interesting to me the way this apparently modern war speaks to that much earlier conflict. I am struck by the very different mood this picture evokes, than the ones of Prince Harry playing on the X-Box in Afghanistan – where the depiction seems to be of a social occasion. See here
photography seems good at commenting on war, so good that photographers are now strictly controlled and used to churn out propaganda … thanks for the link!
Dr Joolz, that’s an interesting observation about the WW1 poets…the supplied link (Visions of Arcadia) goes to a very interesting body of work, the use of the trees made me think about Paul Nash’s “we are making a new world“. – he was a war artists in WW1
I’m booked in and its gone a long way to stop me feeling miserable at missing Arles!
See you there then!
Thanks for the link to the Paul Nash picture @ losingfaithinwords – that is certainly a comparable picture of desolation.
I am not sure if the photographer , Christopher Down ,intended to depict this in the image, but the photograph also has some biblical references in it. There is a feel of the poverty of the stable; a man lying in a place where beasts would normally be; but instead of a manger, the ledge does not shelter but is precariously thin, and the soldier has his hands behind his head like a prisoner. The picture is very uncomfortable to look at.
It certainly has a precarious feeling of trying to evade something and there being no place to rest, yet the images in the shadows on the wall seem to imply its an ongoing situation rather than a transient one.
Anyway I’m looking forward to the talk.
I think the Paul Nash association is fascinating losingfaithinwords.
I have just spent a little time trying to locate a video of John Berger talking about Nicholas Poussin’s Les Bergers d’Arcadie also known as ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ which I am sure is a starting reference for Christopher Down’s title for the body of work. Unfortunately I have been unable to locate it, but the the Wikipedia entry is worth reading.
That’s interesting Gareth, I’ve just looked again after reading the Wikipedia and browsing around a bit on the subject and I can see what you mean.
Am pretty sure you’re correct Gareth, though I’ll let Chris confirm!
Gareth, Losingfaithinwords, Dr Joolz,
You are quite correct in your observations regarding the influence of Nash and Poussin on Visions from Arcadia.
Literary influences include Virgil’s Eclogues, the poetry of Charles Hamilton Sorley and Isaac Rosenberg and Sebastian Faulks’ contemporary novel Birdsong.
Visual inspiration came from the cinematography and sentiment inherent in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Lars von Trier’s Antichrist and Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing.
For me, the premise uniting these influential works is – man is a part of nature not apart from nature. This is explored in Visions from Arcadia where the cyclical nature of war is allied to the cycle of the seasons – contemplating the notion that despite our awareness of an alternative, that peace begets peace, mankind seems bound by a chain of conflict that cannot be broken.
Thanks Christopher
Plenty to explore there. It looks like the artists’ talk will be a stimulating event
I’m also not going to Arles so I really appreciate this. My place is booked and I’m looking forward to the artist’s talk and the seminar.
I’m also looking forward to this, my first OCA study visit.
Thanks to Christopher Down for input. Really interesting to think about your comments in our discussion. Wonderful to have the photographer’s words in the discussion.
For those going to this event (and for those not able) this is a vital text https://vimeo.com/26718047
A reference was made by Jamie Simonds to Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra, her work is widely published and exhibited, and the following link is a good a start as any to consider her work http://www.artnet.com/artists/rineke-dijkstra/
Rally enjoyed the study visit, good conversations with people met for the first time. And really interesting and inspiring talks.
I don’t know if Les is reading but if he is…do you remember the name of the person you quoted to do with habitus and everything else being tourism. I can’t find it online unfortunately and wanted to follow it up.
Thanks
Hi losingfaithinwords
Sorry for the delay! Two ideas conflated here – habitus; I was probably talking about the idea of my upbringing in the forces shaping not only how I see the world but how I let it inform those From the Forest photographs (and others see my blog circa 2010-11), Stuart Griffiths was quoting from Patrick Zachmann (Magnum) along the lines of, ‘you photograph what you know, all else is tourism’ – there is an allusion here to Philip Jones Griffiths’ quote, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/bending-frame-photojournalism-documentary-and-citizen in Fred Ritchin.
Better late! Thanks though Les, I’d managed to find the reference for habitus later … or at least found something about it, which I found interesting as I have a degree in pyschology and am interested in those kinds of theories of identity etc. So I’d worked out that it was 2 separate things.
Still thinking about the exhibition from time to time, so it’s had a lasting effect!
I did away with LFiW and am now plain Anne
Good to hear Anne, I really liked Andy Blunden’s interpretation of habitus here –
http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/bourdieu-review.htm
Just replying to Les, (but not sure where it will appear as the thread hierarchy structure is exhausted!)
Thanks for the link Les, I will continue reflecting on this