Belfast Exposed

Exhibitions

7th Mar - 1st Jun

Our Archive: 40 Years of Belfast Exposed

As part of this year's ongoing celebration of our 40th Anniversary, the Belfast Exposed Archive is taking over Gallery II wi...

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6th Feb - 30th Mar

Navigating Queer Landscapes

We are delighted to be working with the Queer Artist Forum to bring the work of two of its members to Embrace Style, the incl...

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Community

25th Sep - 7th Oct

Young People Behind the Lens

Over the summer, a group of young people from Start 360 explored the cityscape of Belfast. They found new ways to see the...

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21st May - 22nd May

Showing the faces of dementia with Alzheimer’s NI

Ahead of the Alzheimer’s Society Annual Conference 2019 (ASAC19), Belfast Exposed was commissioned by Alzheimer’s NI to w...

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Observations

Gallery 1

5th Sep 2017 to 14th Oct 2017

About The Exhibition

Observations takes as its starting point Swedish playwright and philosopher August Strindberg’s early photographic experiments from 1894, the ‘Celestographs’. In these ‘photographs’, Strindberg placed sensitized photographic plates outside in an attempt to gain a visual record of the night sky. Over time, an image emerged on the plates resembling the star strewn skies, with mottled patches and swirls of blues, browns, greens and golds. In actuality they were formed from the chemical process of the metal plates degrading due to being exposed over long periods of time to the air. Rather than the universe revealing itself through the spectacle of the night sky as would have been perceived by viewers at the time, the Celestographs represent the irrepressible process of entropy and decay. The powerful conceptual readings of these works set the stage for a series of works by contemporary photographers David Fathi, Sjoerd Knibbeler and Jochen Lempert, whose work, in a variety of ways seeks to observe and record the natural world around us.

The Artists

David Fathi Sjoerd Knibbeler Jochen Lempert August Strindberg
Artist Biography

David Fathi's series 'Wolfgang' presents the tale of one of the founders of quantum physics, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, nicknamed the 'Conscience of Physics'. Legend says that when Pauli entered a room, experiments would fail and machinery would break down, something that his colleagues began to jokingly refer to as 'The Pauli Effect'. In this playful body of work, photographer and engineer Fathi creates a semi-fiction working with and manipulating images from the CERN photo archive, capturing the essence of Pauli's presence through scenes of experiments, accidents, levitation, teleportation and spontaneous appearances.

Sjoerd Knibbeler employs photography as a means to visualise, often invisible, natural phenomena such as air, wind, flight and space. Knibbeler carries out fragile, ephemeral constructions and experiments both in his studio and on site, resulting in series' of otherworldly images where it is often difficult to tell if what we see is in fact real. Through the materials he uses and the conditions he visualises, he explores the paradoxical relationship between the still, two-dimensional character of photography, and his often transparent, moving, voluminous subjects.

Jochen Lempert has worked with photography since the early 1990's, with his background as a biologist playing a critical role in his application of the medium. Lempert turns his scientific gaze upon the world around him, nature and creatures. His analogue black and white prints present a compelling, complex yet incomplete encyclopaedia of morphological studies of plants and animals, highlighting natural patterns and movement.

Events

Exhibition Preview

Thursday 31 August | 7-9pm | Belfast Exposed

Free Admission
Artist Talk - Sjoerd Knibbeler

Friday 1 September | 1pm | Belfast Exposed

Free Admission
Culture Night Belfast

Friday 22 September | 11am-10pm | Belfast Exposed

Free Admission
Musical performance by Liam McCartan composed in response to Observations

Friday 22 September | 9pm-10pm | Belfast Exposed

Free Admission
Artist Talk - David Fathi

Saturday 14 October | 2pm | Belfast Exposed

Free Admission

Acknowledgements

Observations is generously supported by Arts Council Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council. We would also like to thank the National Library of Sweden for kindly providing image files of the 'Celestographs' by August Strindberg.