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Join artist Josephine Pryde as part of the UWE Fine Art / Art in the City series of lectures.


With: Josephine Pryde

Josephine Pryde (UK) lives and works in London and Berlin, where she is Professor of Contemporary Photography at the University of the Arts. Known primarily for her photographic work, Pryde has developed a singular style of image making which recalls methods and ideas used in, amongst others, advertising and fashion photography. The artist understands photography as a broad and diverse realm, across which shifts in social attitudes and ideas can be traced. Adopting and layering different elements, the results are sometimes reminiscent of stock photography: generic images produced and archived for commercial use. Her pictures include moments of doubt, however, critical hooks which question the very visual language that she simultaneously employs and references – the shimmering surfaces of expensive designer fabric, portraits of staged personas, or frozen images of splashing liquids.

For her exhibition at Arnolfini, the artist premiers an installation that combines a new three dimensional work with series of photographs picturing hands shot while touching things – things sensitive to touch that respond as consumer technology or as human. The disclaimer implied in the exhibition title, These Are Just Things I Say, They Are Not My Opinions, is examined for ideas about speech. What might be the difference between what is spoken and what is held to be an opinion? Why distinguish between the two? What is being said?

Recent solo exhibitions include Knickers, Berlin, Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn, Estonia, 2014; PHOTOGRAPHS YOU TAKE, THE SCHTIP, Sheffield, 2013; Therapie Thank You Thank You, MD72, Berlin and Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, 2010; La Vie d’Artiste, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2009;Valerie, Secession, Vienna and Brains & Chains, Cubitt, London, 2004. Selected group exhibitions include The Avantgarde: Madame Realism, Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, 2011; Old Ideas, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, 2010 and Olga Chernysheva, R.H. Quaytman & Josephine Pryde, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2009.

Josephine Pryde’s exhibition These Are Just Things I Say, They Are Not My Opinions will be at Arnolfini from Friday 21 November 2014.

Organised by Arnolfini, Bristol City Council, and the University of the West of England.

Supported by Bristol City Council.

Free for UWE staff and students with ID. Tickets can be collected in person from Arnolfini Box Office from 11am on the day of the event.