OCA Study Event. HIP Festival 2018

Many thanks yet again to Hazel and Nicola for organising this event.  After our morning in the Turner Prize Exhibition and lunch we began our visit at the main information centre and shop where the was an exhibition of Lomography to celebrate its 35th Anniversary.

In 1991 a group of Austrian students cme across a Russian Lomokompakt camera.  It produced vignetted images with saturated colours and light leaks.It began a cult which continues today.  Cameras support 35mm, 110 and 120 film.

Dougie Wallace, Harrodsburg.  This exhibition featured street photography of customers who frequent the famous London department store.  According to Wallace's website the project is a powerful, timely and stark expose of the emergence of an ultra-affluent elite ho have turned London into a global reserve currency, changing the face of our city, pricing out the upper middle class natives of Central London, excluding first time buyers from the city and marginalising old wealth and their time-honoured habits.  This and the work itself makes me wonder if Wallace isn't one of the old upper class natives because his work seems to be full of vitriol. 'Ripping into the wealthy' was the comment from one member of the group.  Judging by the reaction on the faces of the subjects the photographer has appeared out of nowhere and pushed a camera into their faces.  They perhaps depict the uglines of materialism but they make the subjects ugly too but perhaps they are just startled.  He is using signifyers to make a point.  In some ways this work resembles Martin Parr but it has none of the warmth and humour of Parr.

Peter Dench - Dench Does Dallas  As Peter Dench is a patron of HIP it is not suprising that he has his own exhibition  It all felt very red, white and blue to me and reminded me of the brash America that I am sure that I don't like.  I also didn't like the lengthy captions and we could do without all of the camera and exposure details.  The images were different sizes, the more interesting ones printed very large, or perhaps more interesting because they were very large.  Prints were mounted on acrylic.

Great Britons of Photography.  This exhibition was curated by Peter Dench and features work from a dozen living UK photographers.  Some fascinating work here.

In and At.  A group exhibition featuring the work of Andrea Lea whose urbex work I had enjoyed here in 2015, Oihana Marco, Vicky Mendiz, Ditte Harlour, Maite Bastena and Thanos Sauvidis.  All work was mounted on acrylic and we were fascinated by the unusual texture on a couple of images by Andrea Lea.

HIP Gallery: http://hipgallery.co.uk/festival/ [accessed 25.11.17]