Events
Turn InMartina Mullaney
01 November - 21 November 2003
Martina Mullaney is a young Irish photographer now living in London. Her exhibition 'Turn In', was a Ffotogallery Touring Exhibition which showed at Mission Gallery from 17 January -28 February 2004
Her photographs brought a distinctly modernist sensibility to her depiction of homelessness. Avoiding the humanist empathic pull of portraits of the under-privileged, Turn In instead studied their sleeping quarters. Her beautiful square large scale photographs record empty beds in hostels and shelters.
This powerful series of images were coupled with photographs created by residents of homeless hostels based in Swansea. Martina befriended and worked closely with all of the residents, who were given disposable cameras over a three week period to document their lives.
The exhibition and accompanying workshops raised some awkward but important questions about the representation of the dispossessed. In not giving us sentimentalised portraits of the marginalised, Mullaney in a very opposite way, provokes critical and aesthetic debate about how any artist can adequately represent the experience of other people, impoverished or otherwise.
