A woman wearing a goldfish bowl on her head, a building like a concrete football, an Orthodox church surrounded by tower blocks, a ruined electricity pylon leaning right over like a science fiction monster galloping into the mist, born-again Christians being immersed in cheap blow-up swimming pools, a snack bar caravan by a deserted lake, a silver birch tree ensnared in metal cables, a baboon in a lecture hall – these are just some of the weird and wonderful images to be seen for FREE at Calvert 22, the exhibition space devoted to the art and film and fashion of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
They are all the work of photographers who were finalists for Calvert’s ‘New East Photo Prize 2018’, a biennial photography competition.
The Prize champions contemporary perspectives on the people and stories of the New East – the 29 countries of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia and Central Asia.
Calvert received over 600 entries which they whittled down to the 16 finalists on display here, each represented by a cluster of photos. Some entrants have as few as four photos, others have a dozen or more, all clearly grouped and presented around the gallery’s clean and minimalist ground floor and basement exhibition spaces.
The finalists
The finalists are:
- Antal Bánhegyesy, Orthodoxia
- Vika Eksta, The Devil’s Lake
- Daria Garnik, Gagarin
- Ilkin Huseynov, Shared Waters
- Join the Cool, Vinietka (Ukrainian graduation album)
- Karol Pałka, Edifice
- Lucia Sekerková, Vrăjitoare
- Michał Sierakowski, Wild Fields
- Michal Solarski, Infirmi
- Alnis Stakle, Heavy Waters
- Lana Stojićević, Sunny Side
- Elena Subach and Viacheslav Poliakov, City of Gardens
- Fyodor Telkov, Ural Mari
- Peter Trembeczki, Victory
- Adam Wilkoszarski, After Season
- Boglárka Éva Zellei, Furnishing the Sacred
Apology for my poor quality photos
I apologise in advance for my poor quality photos. I need to buy a better camera. Some of the photos are viewable in the picture quality they deserve in the gallery towards the bottom of this Calvert 22 web-page.
But I wanted to share the images I liked, albeit in my poor quality reproductions. If you want to get the real, full visual impact – go visit the show!
I particularly liked the following (N.B. Rather than try and paraphrase it, I’ve quoted the exhibition information for each photographer, verbatim):
Some personal favourites
Sunny Side by Lana Stojićević. Stojićević won the Metro Imaging Mentorship Award as part of the New East Photo Prize in 2016. She also won the Croatian Association of Artists’ annual award for best young artist and has been exhibited internationally. Based around the futuristic swimming pool at the Zora Hotel in Primošten, Croatia, the project creates a narrative in the style of a 60’s sci-fi film, exploring both the factual and fictional.
Sunny Side by Lana Stojićević (Croatia)
Victory by Peter Trembeczki. Trembeczki dedicates his work to collective memory and intergenerational issues. His project features Hungarian buildings that have either been abandoned or modified. Often grotesque, these sites have become subjects of collective remembrance: reflections of the nation’s social-political psyche.
Victory by Peter Trembeczki (Hungary)
Orthodoxia by Antal Bánhegyesy (Hungary). Bánhegyesy currently lives and works in Budapest, where he has won a number of international prizes. The project reveals links between Romanian national identity and religion, exploring the 7,000 Orthodox churches built in Romania following the fall of communism just 27 years ago.
Orthodoxia by Antal Bánhegyesy (Hungary)
Wild Fields by Michał Sierakowski (Poland). Sierakowski is a documentary photographer capturing how landscapes influence communities and the ways in which people transform environments to fit their needs. His project focuses on the relationship between Ukraine’s modern landscape and national identity as the country construct new national myths.
Wild Fields by Michał Sierakowski (Poland)
The Devil’s Lake by Vika Eksta (Latvia). Eksta is a visual artist and pedagogue interested in portraiture, performance, archival research and the border between documentary and fiction. Her project examines a mysterious lake in the middle of a forest in eastern Latvia’s Aglona region. The artist grew up close to the lake itself, but only started to photograph it in 2015. The project was first exhibited in June 2018 in Riga but remains unfinished, with plans for a photo book on the horizon.
The Devil’s Lake by Vika Eksta (Latvia)
City of Gardens by Elena Subach and Viacheslav Poliakov (Ukraine). Subach and Poliakov use documentary photography to create stories about our relationship with everyday objects and places. The project travels around the Polish city of Katowice, once an industrial site, now branded a “city of gardens”, in the hopes of reflecting uniquely Polish aesthetics in an era of rapid globalisation.
City of Gardens by Elena Subach and Viacheslav Poliakov (Ukraine)
After Season by Adam Wilkoszarski (Poland). Wilkoszarski is a documentary and landscape photographer based in Poznań, Poland. His work concentrates on how places change once abandoned and deserted by the people, and this project looks at holiday resorts suspended in time at the end of the season, when the tourists have left and beaches and hotels lie empty.
After Season by Adam Wilkoszarski (Poland)
Infirmi by Michal Solarski (Poland). Solarski is a London-based Polish photographer who divides his time between commercial and personal projects. His photography is strongly connected to his own background and experiences, concentrating on leisure, migration and memories. His project takes viewers into the world of Soviet-era sanatoriums: magnificent spas built for the workers to rest and re-energize. Though in varying states of decay, many of these amazing buildings are still functioning.
Infirmi by Michal Solarski (Poland)
There’s an album of photos from the graduating year at a Ukrainian college showing some gorgeous pouting teenagers who are all dying of cool and want to be models. Calvert 22 shows always include this kind of material, partly because it is interested in fashion, film, photography and new stuff from the region. It’s one of these images which the curators have chosen to be the poster image for all its promotions.
Join the Cool (Ukraine), Vinietka (Ukrainian graduation album)
I get that they’re reaching out to a young demographic, and trying to connect up the yoof in all the various countries with our yoof here in the rich West. But personally, I find one bunch of sulky, pouting, skinny models with high cheek bones pretty much the same as the next bunch, whether they’re in New York or Novosibirsk.
What I like about the Calvert 22 exhibitions is the images which convey a real sense of strangeness and difference – the derelict lakes, ominous forests, the urban decay, strange architecture, non-western traditions and beliefs and ideas, the haunting sense of abandonment, which run through so many of these images.
I may like or dislike individual artists and bodies of work, but I am hugely supportive of Calvert 22’s goal of showing us the art and lives and identities, the geography and landscape and urban environment, of this underrepresented region, with all its strange, twisted and tragic history.
Promotional video
Related links
- New East Photo Prize 2018 continues at Calvert 22 until 1 December 2018
Books & Boots 