Patricia Casey selected from International Photography Festival, Russia

Alasdair Foster has invited Patricia Casey to be part of a major exhibition he is curating for this festival

Alasdair Foster is a consultant specialising in international cultural projects and a researcher in the theory of arts policy formation. He has 20 years’ experience heading national arts institutions in Europe and Australia and over 35 years of working in the not-for-profit sector (both as a board member and as an employee).

Alasdair Foster was the founding director of Fotofeis, the award-winning international biennale of photo-based art in Scotland (1991–1997) and, more recently, director of the Australian Centre for Photography (1998–2011).  

Here is an extract from his exhibition brief.

PHOTOVISA

The PhotoVisa International Festival of Photography is an annual event staged in and around Krasnodar in the Black Sea region of Russia. Presented from mid-October through to November, the festival has a wide-ranging program: exhibitions; an international competition for photography and photo-based multimedia; lectures; workshops; a program of projections; and an international portfolio review for Russian photographers. 2015 will make the seventh edition of the festival; the theme this year is ‘The Language of Memory’.  For more information, click here.

EXHIBITION

For much of the twentieth century, photography was associated with archive, memory and even (for writers like Roland Barthes) death. However, with the advent of mobile communication technologies that include a camera and social media platforms that distribute imagery immediately, the emphasis in photography more broadly has moved from the idea of preservation to one of conversation. (For a fuller outline of this idea, my essay ‘Photography’s Third Age’ can be read here ).

The premise of this exhibition it that of ‘A Conversation of Memories’ and it will look at the new approach to memory through photography, not as relics or icons of the past, but as malleable elements interpreted into an ongoing ‘conversation’ with the present.

This curated exhibition will feature  around sevenculturally diverse artists, each from different countries and, together, spanning four continents.

The exhibition space is the Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art which is housed in a former printing works located in the heart of Krasnodar and simply called Typography. This is where I presented the exhibition ‘Fables of Change’ at PhotoVisa in 2013. It is a fascinating and energised place that includes not only an exhibition space, but a communal work area for artists of many disciplines including visual arts, writers, musicians, designers and so on; a place where lone artists can work and not be alone. It also has studio spaces and a dormitory offering inexpensive accommodation to itinerant workers. Typography is a predominantly young, socially diverse community and one of the most progressive art locations in the region.