 Recent
Places is the first of two consecutive exhibitions of new works by John
Riddy. It encapsulates the themes and concerns that are key to Riddy's
practice; the relationship between photography and place, architectural
symmetry, spatial illusion and the world as a sculptural object. The crucial
difference with the works in this exhibition is that they are made exclusively
in colour. By introducing this element Riddy subtly emphasises the particular
characteristics of the locations he has chosen to photograph with the
groupings in each separate gallery space allowing one to encounter distinct
and very different qualities of colour and light.
The exhibition opens with the grand colonial architecture of Maputo's
Central Railway Station. The classical recession and feeling of depth
in the first two images contrasts sharply with the photograph of one of
the city¹s elegant but mouldering modernist apartment blocks here
seen bathed in rich tropical light and encroached upon by equatorial vegetation.
In this work the emphasis is on flat planes and shallow space seemingly
held behind a web of trees.
The
next series of images depict night-time scenes in the City of London where
artificial illumination creates saturated colour and heightens the sense
contemporaneity, here even the moon appears as a neon streak. At the same
time the photos relate strongly to 19th Century photographers' preoccupations
with scenes of industrial advance. Pictures of classic, Victorian, massively
engineered structures, such as Blackfriar's railway bridge spanning the
river, are shown along side images of The City¹s burgeoning high-rise
architecture. In Riddy's version London appears almost weightless, distanced
but somehow not unfamiliar, it is a place of where incongruity produces
instances of surprising beauty and enjoyment.
The
landscapes of South Africa are the subject of the works on show in the
basement galleries. These desolate places have an almost mythical air
often evoking biblical landscapes from early renaissance painting. A view
across the sea from The Cape feels as if it has never been witnessed by
humans with its hazy horizon and rainbows dissolving into mist and light.
The pictures of the small Afrikaans settlements and their iconic religious
architecture both compliment and throw into stark contrast the surrounding
primal landscapes.
The
two final works in the exhibition are concerned with spatial structure
- the composition of the images seems to hold the viewer at bay at the
same time there is a very tangible sense of the parallel time zones -
of the world within the frame of the photograph and that of the present.
***
John
Riddy was born in 1959. He studied at Chelsea School of Art. His work
has been exhibited widely both in Britain and abroad, recent exhibitions
include 100 Great Photographs, Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, Cathedral and
Camera, Baltic, Newcastle (2003). His large-scale photographic installation
of Room 101 can be seen currently at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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