We are delighted to kick off our new staff and volunteer blogs with an insight to Director, Ben Harman's musings on the past couple of weeks.
A friend of mine once self-published a zine with the deliberately playful subtitle: Yesterday’s News Tomorrow. I like the way that these words could describe the enduring impact of some art from the past and the phrase has been on my mind over the last couple of weeks in the lead-up to the launch of our new exhibition at Stills: Lewis Baltz with works by Carl Andre and Charlotte Posenenske. Whilst the display is primarily a showcase of three series of photographic works by Lewis Baltz, it is intended to locate his practice within the context that he preferred, that of contemporary art, rather than a more limited, medium-specific context of photography. Radical is not too strong a word to use for the photographs, sculpture, installation and works on paper in our exhibition despite the fact that some of the objects are more than fifty years old. Working with the rest of the Stills team as well as various lenders and the exhibition co-curator, Sebastien Montabonel, it has been a pleasure to help get the exhibition installed and open. This is a timely return of Baltz’s work to Scotland after a break of exactly forty years. Appropriately he was included in Recent American Still Photography at the Fruitmarket Gallery in 1976, the first exhibition organized by the Scottish Photography Group who went on to establish Stills in 1977. Over the last week I also had the opportunity to think about Stills’ history during the installation of a display for Filmhouse, Edinburgh. Running for one month and timed to coincide with the Photography on Film programme at Filmhouse, our display in the café and adjacent corridor includes twenty Stills exhibition posters dating from 1978 to the present day as well as recently produced photographs from a series titled Alva by the Edinburgh-based photographer David Grinly. So much of the last couple of weeks have been about looking back in order to look forwards, taking inspiration from the past in order to make exciting plans for the future. All this reminds me of Man Ray’s brilliant comment about being asked what it was like to be ahead of his time: I’m of my time, you are behind the times.
Ben Harman, Director, Stills |
The installation in progress last week with photographs by Lewis Baltz in the foreground
A work by Charlotte Posenenske. Unpacked, assembled and waiting to be installed.
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