Space | DMB Media – Worldwide project and personal career management

DMB Space will be operating new Off Site Projects, updates and schedules will follow shortly. Keep up to date at http://dmbmedia.co.uk/space/ and [email protected]

SIMON ROBERTS “POLYARNYE NOCHI”

26th January – 11th March 2011

“Simon Roberts’ work in its silver blue tones captures the raw, unusual beauty of Russia’s Arctic periphery. Polyarnye Nochi, a series of photographs, which follow on from Roberts’ critically acclaimed book Motherland (Chris Boot Ltd, 2007), portrays the Russia at its most severe. The bleak and barren landscapes speak of a loss, abandonment and a melancholy that are realities of life in a land ‘famous for its misfortunes, famous for the misery of its numberless humble lives.”

The exhibition brings together 24 prints from the series, resulting in two different reactions to the work. An overwhelming utopia, a sense of the sublime pulls you deep into 6 large-scale frozen landscapes. There’s a calmness that surrounds these images. Whereas the smaller prints offer up a more intimate overview of the harsh scenery, sporadically placed, reaffirming a journey that Roberts’ took into this silent terrain.

WASSINKLUNDGREN “EMPTY BOTTLES”

28th October  - 17th December 2010

“This is work in its most basic sense: a means of survival. China offers only a rudimentary package of social services; millions have to devise their own way of keeping their head above water, even in China’s economic miracle. But it’s not really about the deprivation. Many of the scavengers are far from pathetic. These are people with an aim, an objective in perfect harmony with the highly affluent society in which they scavenge for a living.” This is how Hans Moleman, in ‘The Land of boundless Ambition’ describes the scene in the work by Dutch artists WassinkLundgren.

The series is comprised of the portraits of 24 scavengers who are attracted to the bottles which WassinkLundgren have put in front of their camera. Each time a bottle is picked up, the duo snaps a picture, letting the empty bottle act as a cable release and turning the work into a performance piece of every day life. The project captures and documents the real-life acts of recycling, which usually goes largely unnoticed but is an integral part of contemporary life in china.