'New Work': 3 solo exhibitions at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London; La Fabrica, Madrid and Guernsey Photography Festival 2011

New Work consisted of landscape photographs made with a variety of analogue cameras and formats and new family photographs of Billingham’s young family, also made with a variety of analogue cameras and formats that focused on the young children’s growing awareness of the world around them, especially the children’s interest in the natural world.
All of the photography experimented with a wide range of analogue cameras, from cheap unbranded cameras with plastic lenses sourced from charity shops to high end panoramic and medium format cameras. There was a dynamic in all of the exhibitions between the wide range of subject matter, scale of images, variety of formats and approaches, black and white and colour and high / low resolution photography and the overall aesthetic coherence and ‘stillness’ of the installations.
The three solo exhibitions were ‘New Work’, Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London (9 April – 26 May 2010); New Work, La Fabrica, Madrid and Rays a Laugh/New Work, Guernsey Photography Festival, June 2011
The theme of the Guernsey Photography Festival 2011 was ‘Identity’ and the aim of the festival was to reveal a multitude of interpretations from personal to social to political. Billingham’s inclusion consisted of new family work about childhood and older vintage photography selected from his series ‘Ray’s a Laugh’ that focused on his parents and brother. The two bodies of old and new family work, installed together revealed new insights into the themes of family and biography in his practice. Other participating artists included Nelli Palomäki, Carolyn Drake, Francesco Giusti and Samuel Fosso.