Photo Art at Boutographies Festival, Montpelier

Photo Art are very excited to announce that we have been selected as the course of honour at this year's Boutographies festival in Montpelier, France!

From the press release:

Boutographies, a renowned photography Festival in the south of France, has specially selected the Photographic Art course at Newport to showcase some of its best work over the past four years. Ranging from current students to graduates there will be 14 people representing the course in total. Screened on a showreel in Montpellier this is a fantastic opportunity for the course and its students to gain international recognition. This is another accolade for this high achieving course in photography.

You can view the showreel here and continue reading below for the list of photographers and artists represented as well as a short piece of writing about each piece of work.

The images used at the start of this post are from projects by (in order): Josephine Sowden, Meg Beaumont, Sara Rejaie and Sion Jones.

'Present'

Bachelor of Art (BA) en Photographie et Arts Plastiques de l'université du Pays de Galles, Newport.

Extraits de travaux par les étudiants et jeunes diplomés de ce cursus photographique d'avant garde.

Artistes:

Meg Beaumont (2012 Graduate)
‘Little birds’
‘Little Birds’ investigates memory within the family environment. The images explore the gaps between our memories, and show the viewer how it is these 'inbetween' moments that so richly make up how we remember the tapestry of our lives.

Matt Simmons (2011 Graduate)
‘Utopus’
'Utopus' explores the notion of the utopian as an unattainable vision. The work questions the role of education and educators within civil planning, making reference to the philosopher king in Thomas More's 'Utopia' as a model by which rulers or officials may impart knowledge unto others for the betterment of society.

Aston Parrott (2012 Graduate)
‘Ultimate fascination’
This body of work explores the influences directed towards customers as they set foot in a car showroom. The work deconstructs the inner working of automotive advertising and consumer culture to reveal the theatrical machinations that support the dream we are being sold.

Jade Dolby (2012 Graduate)
‘Dislocate’
Dislocate explores how humans instinctively seek somewhere to retreat to and form a bond with. What happens when that possibility is stripped away time and time again? The photographs become a reflection on emotions involved in a desperate need to settle.

Sion Jones (2012 Graduate)
‘Square one’
Square one comprises thirty-six video diaries intended to explore the artist’s daily struggle with intense emotional states. Inner mind-chatter is constant in our lives, dwelling in the
past and worrying about the future lead to an anxious existence, the artist uses his work as a way of exploring his own mental health.

Kate Mercer (2011 Graduate)
‘Love in absence’
The artist explores her father’s absence from family life. Exploring ideas of memory, loss and desire, Love in Absence is a despondent search for a man missing from his own home; inviting him to return, waiting to see if he does.

Caitlin George (2012 Graduate)
Seduction intended
This body of work questions the intentions behind the lighting of commercial space. The series explores ideas of abstraction, whose reliance upon line, form, and colour adds an extra layer of seduction to the resulting images.

Matt Colquhoun (Current 3rd Year)
Automatically Sunshine
Colquhoun’s work investigates the relationship between music and imagery; an unsung link between contemporary photo books and mix tapes. The ways we assign meaning to the images we take and the songs we listen to are not so different. This project is an attempt to bring both song and image together.


Jake Gardiner (Current 2nd Year)
Welsh Slag
This project aims to look at how stunning images can be found in the most unassuming places. Within the Pontypool constituency is the ‘Big Pit’ world heritage sight, which stands as a monument to the influences the area had during the industrial revolution. Searching for beauty in what was left behind from this golden era, the artist studied samples of slag through a microscope. The artist discovered that what may seem like waste to the naked eye – when you dig deeper – can be incredibly beautiful.


Naomi Hall (Current 3rd Year)
Just £2 a month
These images use a different visual approach to get past the barrier of disassociation. Using children’s toys and craft to create a summarisation of African Wars, Famines, and Colonisation, the artist provides a soft medium to reflect a harsh reality. The body of work intends to promote awareness and provoke change.

Sara Rejaie (Current 3rd Year)
Familial landscapes
This project is rooted in the relationship the artist has with home. Over time, broken glass becomes smoothed and shaped by the sea into aesthetically pleasing and tactile objects that the artist’s mother has been collecting for as long as she can remember. The notion of time passing is present in the images.

Josephine Sowden (2012 Graduate)
The lilies of the field
This video explores the persistent stream of inner mind chatter - the background hum to our daily lives; this is something so familiar, so constant, that it has had no problem
gaining our trust. Most are under the illusion that this voice is who they are, yet what Josephine questions in ‘The Lilies of the Field’ is whether this voice really is our true self.

Jason Peck (2011 Graduate)
Untitled
“In the frozen gaze of the anonymous woman I am transfixed. The reaction is impulsive, visceral and beyond rationality. Lost amongst the memories of strangers I discover her, suspended in a state of limbo. Forgotten, she no longer belongs, sitting anonymously amongst the discarded artifacts of those who have past. She lingers, unable to pass, yet is unable to move forward. I have no claim, time owns her now, yet cannot leave her abandoned, resigned to obscurity. She is time stolen, stolen from time”

Beverley Cornwell (2012 Graduate)
Woodland (from the project ‘Volitant’)
This work explores the meaning of animal representations and their public display by humans, questioning the habitats created for them. Woodland shows an air conditioning breeze unintentionally giving life to otherwise motionless natural history exhibits, once again giving it the power of flight.

Pour en savoir plus sur Photographie et Arts plastiques visitez: www.newport.ac.uk