Photography | Space and Time

Ryan Glyndwr Davies visited CASC Llandudno to cast a critical eye over, Space and Time, the latest photography exhibition from Zurich based artist, Gemma Carly Pepper.

The CASC shared gallery and studio space, hidden in the shadow behind Oriel Mostyn, is a little known yet highly fertile testing and proving ground for a number of new and exciting upcoming artists based in the area. A sort of academy for future prospects who will hopefully make the transition to its larger sister space and beyond.

The latest CASC offering is the grandly titled ‘Space & Time’, a photography exhibition by the artist Gemma Carly Pepper. Such a title suggests a sense of ambition, though the subject matter, process and presentation of the works are carefully handled. The show itself consists of a small collection of 12 black and white works so simple and naive that both show and title are neatly juxtaposed.

Through the medium of a 35mm camera, the artist uses the notion of space and time to, as the quoted narrative states, question ‘the definitive reality of things around us’…that …’things in our lives are a shadow of reality’, or if alternatively, that…’reality is imagination and intuition’.

Using a technique of long exposure, the artist has produced a number of fleeting, spectral-like images that you sense really do capture the fragmented shadow of reality, a half figure here, a striding half legged foot that is both there and not there. Through this show the physical world is deconstructed, the observer invited to reevaluate perception of space and time. In the example of Divided Portrait, a piece that draws similarities to a Bacon portrait, the figure looks both at you and immediately away from you in the same instant.

This is an intriguing show that punches well above its weight. The only main drawback being the short show timescale, meaning by the time you read this the show will be, in the words of Ralph Eugene Meatyard that accompany the narrative, ‘gone in a shadow’.