HIP Photo Gallery, Hull

Hullywood Icons, Quentin Budworth

Although we had gone to Hull to visit Ferens Art Gallery and to see the Blade, it is always worth popping into the HIP (Hull International Photo) Gallery as there is usually something interesting to see.  On this occasion it was Hullywood Icons, the brainchild of Quentin Budworth and the idea of a play on words.  But what if Hull were really Hollywood and the people film stars.  Budworth wanted to create a body of work that involved people from Hull as participants and collaborators in a playful way.  Local people, and one or two celebrities volunteered to be models for the project and Budworth created Hollywood sets for them.  

I thought that show was excellent and I really appreciated the humour.  I particularly enjoyed the image of Peter Levy, host of BBC TV's Look North as James Bond in the film Dr. No.  Images were either mounted on cream in white frames or displayed mounted on aluminium/acrylic.  Where glass was used it was non-reflective and each image had a caption underneath it.  It would have been interesting to see the captions placed separately and then the viewer could have made up their own mind as to the film being represented.  I have always tended to prefer plain glass for frames, but I coming round to the idea that, despite the possibility of softening the image slightly that is preferable to distracting reflections.