Published to accompany an exhibition at MK Gallery, this is the first major survey of the work of contemporary British artist and photographer Ingrid Pollard, nominated for the Turner Prize 2022.
This publication provides the first overview of works by British artist and photographer
Ingrid Pollard. Pollard is renowned for using portrait and landscape photography to question our relationship with the natural world and to interrogate social constructs such as Britishness, race, sexuality and identity. Working across a variety of techniques from photography, printmaking, drawing and installation to artists' books, video and audio, Pollard combines meticulous research and experimental processes to make art that is at once deeply personal and socially resonant.
'Ingrid Pollard's practice has long been focused on the human body, astro-physics and geology, and in particular geology in the formation of the stars and planets. The title of this publication -
Carbon Slowly Turning - invites us to reflect on geological time in relation to human time. On the one hand, the millennia in which carbon, rock and other natural materials are made, and on the other, the brevity of human existence by comparison and the affecting nature of geology on the human form. A number of Pollard's works reflect on the cyclical nature of history and human experience, where everything is subject to change, sometimes over hundreds or thousands of years, at other times in the blink of an eye.'
- Gilane Tawadros, Curator, writer and CEO, DACS
'Ingrid Pollard's work slows down our looking to create space to consider alternative formations of history and landscape. Across four decades she has re-scripted Britishness, looking back in order that we might move forward differently. This is a profound and timely exploration of this vital British artist.'
- Maria Balshaw, Director, Tate
This book accompanies an exhibition at
MK Gallery and Turner Contemporary, curated by
Gilane Tawadros, with the artist, and supported by the Freelands Award 2020. Edited by
Fay Blanchard and
Anthony Spira. Essays by
Anna Arabindan-Kesson,
Cheryl Finley,
Paul Gilroy,
Mason Leaver-Yap and
Gilane Tawadros.
Arabindan-Kesson, Anna: - Anna Arabindan-Kesson is an Assistant Professor of African American and Black Diasporic art at Princeton University. She specialises in African American, Caribbean, and British Art, with an emphasis on histories of race, empire, and transatlantic visual culture. Her research focuses on processes of cultural exchange and geographical movement, underpinned by histories of colonialism, and the legacies of these encounters in contemporary art practice. Prior to her appointment at Princeton in 2015 she was Assistant Professor of American Art at Temple University, Philadelphia, and Teaching Fellow at Yale. She has presented papers on Pollard's work at conferences at Yale, University of Sydney, NYU, and University of Central Lancashire.
Blanchard, Fay: - Fay Blanchard is Head of Exhibitions at MK Gallery. Prior to joining the gallery she worked as Visual Arts Curator with the British Council, producing exhibitions of artists including Michael Landy, Grayson Perry and Paula Rego.
Finley, Cheryl: - Cheryl Finley is Associate Professor of Art History at Cornell University. She holds a Ph.D. in African American Studies and History of Art from Yale University. An art historian, curator and contemporary art critic, Dr. Finley has contributed essays and reviews to Aperture, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, American Quarterly and Art Forum. Her prolific critical attention to photography has produced the co-authored publications Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story (Carnegie Museum of Art, 2011), Harlem: A Century in Images (Skira Rizzoli, 2010), Diaspora, Memory, Place (Prestel, 2008), and numerous catalogue essays and journal articles on artists such as Lorna Simpson, Hank Willis Thomas, Walker Evans, Joy Gregory, Carrie Mae Weems, Roshini Kempadoo, Deborah Willis and Berenice Abbott.
Gilroy, Paul: - Paul Gilroy is a historian, writer and cultural theorist and the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at UCL (2019). Prior to UCL, he taught at South Bank University, Essex University, Goldsmiths, University of London, Yale University, London School of Economics and King's College London. Gilroy is the 2019 winner of the Holberg Prize. He is known for his influential studies on black cultural expression on both sides of the Atlantic; the cultural history of postcolonial societies; and the sociology of ethnicity, race and racism in Britain.
Spira, Anthony: - Anthony Spira is Director of MK Gallery, having been curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Jeu de Paume, Paris. He has produced many publications on artists including Ellen Altfest, Hans Bellmer, Peter Dreher and George Stubbs.
Tawadros, Gilane: - Gilane Tawadros was the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in London, chaired by Professor Stuart Hall. She has spent her career in the visual arts both curating numerous exhibitions and writing extensively on contemporary art. Tawadros is a Trustee and Vice-Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation, Trustee of the Stuart Croft Foundation, member of the Whitechapel Art Gallery Editorial Board and serves on the Board of European Visual Arts (EVA) and on the Intellectual Property Office's (IPO) Copyright Advisory Panel.
Yap, Mason Leaver: - Mason Leaver-Yap is currently an Associate Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the co-founder of LUX Scotland, an artist's moving image distribution agency. From 2014-2017 they created and produced the Walker Moving Image Commissions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Leaver-Yap served as selector and jury for the Turner Prize in 2017 and presented public projects at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2007 to 2009. They have recently worked on projects with artists including Ingrid Pollard, Renée Green and Free Agent Media, Onyeka Igwe, Lin+Lam, Evan Ifekoya, Sunil Gupta and the Estate of Tessa Boffin, Sharon Hayes and Mathew Parkin, Iman Issa, Rachel O'Reilly, Andrea Büttner, Kat Anderson, Jamie Crewe, Beatrice Gibson with CAConrad and Eileen Myles.
