Public Preview
Friday 9th October
6pm - 8pm
The Quiet Locus approaches displacement not as a singular event, but as a condition that unfolds within the image itself. Working with vernacular photographs removed from their original contexts, the series places these fragments into direct contact with unstable environments—submerged in water, partially buried beneath stones, overtaken by organic matter, or interrupted by the presence of insects.Through these encounters, the image is no longer a fixed document but becomes permeable and contingent. Faces blur, surfaces dissolve, and details are obscured or revealed through shifting material conditions. The photographs exist in a state of transition, where visibility is fragile and never fully secured.
Rather than illustrating displacement, the work enacts it. The images are subjected to processes of absorption, erosion, and interruption, allowing time, environment, and chance to act as collaborators. In this way, memory is not preserved but unsettled—dislocated from its origin and reconfigured through its surroundings.
By bringing together archival imagery and physical intervention, The Quiet Locus explores how photographs migrate across contexts, accumulate and lose meaning, and
resist stable interpretation. The works inhabit a space between presence and
disappearance, where past and present coexist in a continuous state of negotiation.
About the Artist:
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Gemma Carly Pepper is an artist and photographer whose practice explores identity, intergenerational trauma, memory, and our relationship with the natural world. Working across photography, found imagery and mixed media, she often begins with forgotten, lost or discarded objects, particularly vernacular photographs—which she recontextualizes to create new narratives and relationships.
She studied Fine Art Photography at Llandrillo College in Rhos-on-Sea and at the University of Derby in England. In 2021, she completed a Master of Arts in Art Education, specialising in Curatorial Studies, at the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2022, she received the Elles x Paris Photo Award at Paris Photo. Her work has since been presented at Photo London, Photo Basel, Paris Photo and AIPAD in New York, among other international exhibitions and fairs.
Theatr Clwyd
Raikes Lane
Mold
CH7 1YA
Opening Hours:
Open Until 2nd November 2026