A event on Thursday 19th May. The event starts at 18:00.
SERCHIA is honoured to welcome "Ripples In The Surface of Things: Recent Works On Nature" a solo exhibition by Sam Laughlin in a collection of new photography following the movements of animals, and the intricate ways their lives shape and are shaped by their environments.
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday 19 May 2022 from 18.00-21.00
The exhibition will be on view and open daily by appointment through 17 July 2022.
Exhibition Statement
Ripples in the Surface of Things: Recent Works on Nature
The movements of animals follow rhythms and patterns, their lives shape their environments and are shaped by them - they are nestled in the world. Seasonal migration, reproduction, nesting, feeding; these processes have a fleeting significance that may be read, but not grasped. Wordless hieroglyphs on a scroll unravelling through time. If we are patient enough to observe such movements, or the signs which infer them, we gain access to a private sphere where the act of looking becomes an intimate one. Behaviours evolve through time, so when we watch animals, and the quiet events of their lives, we are in a kind of eternal present, witnessing both what is now and the echoes of what has passed - accumulated movements and lives lived, like the marks left on dead wood by certain beetle larvae as they feed, grow and emerge.
Ripples in the Surface of Things brings together recent works which are being shown for the first time. They form a small part of Laughlin’s ongoing series A Certain Movement, which was originally commissioned for the 2017 Jerwood/Photoworks award. The works are the result of close observation - particularly of birds, about which Laughlin is passionate - a slow and searching way of looking, born out in the subtle and attentive qualities of the photographs themselves. The title of the exhibition comes from a text by the writer Adam Nicolson, written to accompany the series.
Often seemingly cryptic in their subject matter, each of the works is concerned with intricate underlying processes and cycles - relationships between organism and environment that form what ecologists call a ‘niche’. The word niche derives from the French nicher, which means ‘to make a nest’ - a recurring motif throughout the exhibition, symbolic of the ways in which animals are at home in the world we share with them, a world we are steadily rendering uninhabitable.
Artist Biography
Born 1990 in Cambridgeshire, UK. Sam Laughlin's practice is concerned with a variety of forms and processes both natural and man-made. Much of his recent work is characterised by its slowness, focussing on natural processes, eco-systems and animal behaviour. Laughlin has exhibited widely, including at the Brighton Photo Fringe where he received the Danny Wilson Memorial Award, and at Jerwood Space, Impressions Gallery and Belfast Exposed as part of the Jerwood/Photoworks award. He works mainly on personal work, which sometimes takes the form of commissions, most recently for John Hansard Gallery, Towner Gallery and GRAIN Projects.
Entry requirements:
Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday 19 May 2022 from 18.00-21.00
The exhibition will be on view and open daily by appointment through 17 July 2022.
Exhibition Statement
Ripples in the Surface of Things: Recent Works on Nature
The movements of animals follow rhythms and patterns, their lives shape their environments and are shaped by them - they are nestled in the world. Seasonal migration, reproduction, nesting, feeding; these processes have a fleeting significance that may be read, but not grasped. Wordless hieroglyphs on a scroll unravelling through time. If we are patient enough to observe such movements, or the signs which infer them, we gain access to a private sphere where the act of looking becomes an intimate one. Behaviours evolve through time, so when we watch animals, and the quiet events of their lives, we are in a kind of eternal present, witnessing both what is now and the echoes of what has passed - accumulated movements and lives lived, like the marks left on dead wood by certain beetle larvae as they feed, grow and emerge.
Ripples in the Surface of Things brings together recent works which are being shown for the first time. They form a small part of Laughlin’s ongoing series A Certain Movement, which was originally commissioned for the 2017 Jerwood/Photoworks award. The works are the result of close observation - particularly of birds, about which Laughlin is passionate - a slow and searching way of looking, born out in the subtle and attentive qualities of the photographs themselves. The title of the exhibition comes from a text by the writer Adam Nicolson, written to accompany the series.
Often seemingly cryptic in their subject matter, each of the works is concerned with intricate underlying processes and cycles - relationships between organism and environment that form what ecologists call a ‘niche’. The word niche derives from the French nicher, which means ‘to make a nest’ - a recurring motif throughout the exhibition, symbolic of the ways in which animals are at home in the world we share with them, a world we are steadily rendering uninhabitable.
Artist Biography
Born 1990 in Cambridgeshire, UK. Sam Laughlin's practice is concerned with a variety of forms and processes both natural and man-made. Much of his recent work is characterised by its slowness, focussing on natural processes, eco-systems and animal behaviour. Laughlin has exhibited widely, including at the Brighton Photo Fringe where he received the Danny Wilson Memorial Award, and at Jerwood Space, Impressions Gallery and Belfast Exposed as part of the Jerwood/Photoworks award. He works mainly on personal work, which sometimes takes the form of commissions, most recently for John Hansard Gallery, Towner Gallery and GRAIN Projects.
Entry requirements:
Tickets for similar Bristol events.
