MMX Gallery is very happy to be involved again with UrbanPhotoFest, an international photography festival exploring contemporary visual practices focusing on urban life. The gallery will be hosting an exhibition of the Festival Artist, Edward Hillel.
The state of world affairs demands a response and analytical lens in which an exhibition can become a kind of thinking machine …
- Okwui Enwezor, Creative Time Summit, Venice Biennale 2015
In Thinking Machine, Edward Hillel has ventured into what we could call photography shaped into a cartography of engagement. Showing a diversity of works based in the importance of the perseverance of memory, the artist invites the viewer to walk through his creative process, allowing the public to get a deeper understanding of the multilayered work. In a retrospective manner, we consider how the work establishes a dialogue, how it searches for a reality related to the subjects depicted, creating pieces that represent meditative visual spaces. In Thinking Machine one could expect to engage with the artist's work as much as with the artist's thoughts through his sketches and selections.
Exhibiting works from Missing (New York, 2001), Coming Soon…(Manchester, 2002), Occupy (New York, 2011), Twentytwo Pharmacies (Andalucia, 2017) and 43 (2015-ongoing) in conjunction with the artist's publications, workbooks, photographs, drawings, texts, and a site-specific installation provide visitors insight into the artist's process.
Two limited-editions zines Twentytwo Pharmacies/Ventidos Farmaciasand Manchester Sketchbooks will be published on the occasion of Urban PhotoFest 2017 and availabe at the gallery as well.
Edward Hillel is a photographer who works at the nexus of history and memory, cities in flux, public space and social practice. His projects engage the photographic image in documentary, conceptual, performative and site-specific processes. He has received the Verband der Deutschen Kritikerpreis fur Bildende Kunst Berlin / German Critics Visual Arts Prize (Berlin), The Golden Sheaf Film Award (Canada), the Prix Alain de Rothschild (France), and the Spiro Institute Arts Award (UK). His work has been exhibited and published internationally.
Edward Hillel's project in London is supported by the Canada-UK Foundation and co-organised by Paul Halliday, Goldsmiths. University of London and Dr. Susan Hansen, Middlesex University (London).
Exhibition Curators: Edward Hillel and Esther Sanchez / In collaboration with MMX Gallery
*Page title background image: Spain Pharmacies by © Edward Hillel
Thinking Machine is an exhibition in the Urban Photo Village at UrbanPhotoFest, an annual photographic arts festival focusing on cities and urban spaces. The Urban Photo Village showcases the work of established and emerging artists, in eleven venues located within walking distance of each other, in and around Deptford. An area with a strong sense of community and neighbourhood, Deptford it is another example of London's ever-changing social landscape. In addition, the village - with its intensive programme of workshops and seminars - creates an active space to encourage discussion, participation and creativity, involving local communities, artists, researchers and people interested in contemporary urban life.
UrbanPhotoFest will take place 10 - 15 November 2017 and the theme is Cartographies. The festival aims to provide an engaging and culturally relevant programme that reflects on visual approaches to contemporary urban life and the image of the city. The programme of events includes the Urban Encounters conference, exhibitions, seminars, workshops, urban walks and portfolio reviews; all of which are overseen by a steering group of lens-media artists and urban researchers. The festival collaborates with a number of international arts and academic institutions, established and emerging artists, urban theorists and researchers. Together their work addresses critical urbanism within its varied and diverse forms, and explores how photography plays an important role in opening up debates about urban change, voice and the condition of the city.