/Seconds

Mandy Lee Jandrell, Three photographs from the photographic series 'Eidyllion' were exhibited as part of /Seconds exhibition at the Sharjah Art Foundation.
Titles:
Boars, Burgher’s Zoo, Arnhem, The Netherlands
Waterfall, Mini Hollywood, Tabernas Desert, Andalucia, Spain
Moose, Camp America, Mall of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

The series 'Eidyllion' interrogates constructed representations of nature within the built urban environments of zoos, theme parks, living museums. The selection of images exhibited look specifically at representations in constructed leisure environments that reproduce problematic and nostalgic conventions that reiterate a divide between humanity and what we might define as nature. They explored hyper-real technologically constructed landscapes in theme parks, zoos and living museums drawing out incongruities between the surreal and the banal, between the natural world and the world of artifice. These works, through unravelling the veneer of the constructed landscape, expose our continually unfulfilled yearning for a return to a ‘primal’ nature. Using different levels of conceit within the images, sometimes nestled over one another, she sets up a ‘double-take’, one that draws us to the paradox that, as Adorno put its, a harmonious immersion in nature (our aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of nature which recollects a world without domination) is incompatible with human consciousness (ie we don’t actually want to be animals). In playing the role of both tourist and documentary photographer, travelling the world, revealing the seams between artifice and reality in her images, the work picks at the construction of narratives in photography itself.

Curated by Peter Lewis, Sharjah Art Foundation presents a selection of artists’ works from the online journal /seconds. (2004-2014), which covers a broad range of issues and art practices from different cultural perspectives.

Participating Artists
Abdullah Al Saadi, Emily Allchurch, Conrad Atkinson, Fabienne Audéoud, George Bolster, Tony Chakar, Elizabeth Chadwick, Gordon Cheung, Ami Clarke, Stephen Clarke, Judith Cowan, Roger Cremers, Myriam Custers, Shezad Dawood, Sean Dower, Milena Dragicevic, Thomas Draschan, Alan Dunn, Paul Eachus, Laura Emsley, Al Fadhil, Nooshin Farhid, Anna Faushauer, David Ferry, Damian Flores Cortes, Peter Fillingham, Leo Fitzmaurice, Alison Gill, Margarita Gluzberg, Alex Hamilton, Margaret Harrison, Laura Hatry, Dan Hays, Taraneh Hemami, Aaron Hobson, Janet Hodgson, Mandy Lee Jandrell, Mohammed Kazem, Peter Kennard, Uta Kögelsberger, Karen Knorr, Colm Lally, Thaniel Lee, Liliane Lijn, Rut Blees Luxemburg, David Mabb, Ruth Maclennan, Melanie Manchot, Kito Mbiango, Makiko Nagaya, Adam Nankervis, Warren Neidich, Guillaume Paris, Nada Prlja, Annie Ratti, Cullinan Richards, Graziella Rizkallah Toufic, Giorgio Sadotti, Hilary Koob-Sassen, Edgar Schmitz, Hassan Sharif, Lisa Stansbie, Sergei Sviatchenko, Jalal Toufic, Rob Voerman, Jonathan Whitehall, Cindy Wright, Takayuki Yamamoto.

This exhibition also presents a special section composed of selected artists' video and audio from issues 1-14 with works by: Asa Anderson, Paul Allsopp, Martyn Blundell, Ben Brierley, Tim Brotherton, Edward Chell, James Chinnock, Rosie Cooper, Patrick Courtney, David Cunningham, James Early, Luciana Farinati, William Furlong, Mark Harris, Véronique Janin Devoldère, Ben Judd, Anne Keleher, Conor Kelly, Peter Lewis, Peter Lloyd Lewis, Katrin Lock, Karl Lydon, Elizabeth McAlpine, Monika Oechsler, Uriel Orlow, Mark Pickles, Adrian Shaw, Marie-Anne Souloumiac, Stuart Tait, Anders Weberg, Cecilia Wee, Robert William, Jo Wonder.

• Organisation
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