Exhibitions

Sarah Pickering – Holding Fire

May 9 - Jun 20 2009

Holding Fire brings together for the first time two bodies of work Incident and Explosions, capturing the fascinating and bizarre spectacles to be found in the training centres of the emergency services. On gallery level one, large black and white images of fire-damaged interiors present us with an institutional simulation of potentially tragic events - scenarios that are recreated, restaged and repeated endlessly by the fire fighting services. By way of contrast, the ground floor exhibition features full colour images of pyrotechnic explosions used by British police and military instructors to intensify the sense of drama and tension in training exercises. These pictures are part of a series taken at test sites in the English countryside where the bursts of light, flames, sparks, and smoke sit incongruously in the rural setting.

Sarah Pickering explains what attracted her to the subject:

“Whether real or artificial, we enjoy looking at explosions and fire scenes and, as an artist, I’m of course fascinated by their visual seductiveness. By using photography to record a simulated or imagined scene, I’m creating a document that is already a departure from reality”

About the artist

Sarah Pickering is a London based, British photographer who graduated from the Royal College of Art with a MA in Photography in 2005. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Photographers Gallery Graduate Award and a Jerwood Photography Award in 2005. Work from the Incident series is about to be shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of an exhibition of their recent acquisitions. Aperture and the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago will co-publish a substantial monograph of her work later this year.