End of the Season
A solo exhibition of an ongoing project that focused on family holidays at Rhyl, the seaside resort in North Wales.
1/1/17
Grosvenor Museum, Chester, UK
An exhibition of photographs, photomontages, photobooks and ephemera at the Grosvenor Museum Chester (2015), Weaver Hall Northwich (2017), and the Vallum Gallery, University of Cumbria (2017) and three photobook publications, drawn from the photographic research End of Season
Research process:
My research is concerned with the experience of place and its representation by photography; in places related to leisure and heritage, as well as my own everyday habitat. I have collected family photographs, postcards and guidebooks, which record the seaside town, Rhyl. This material presents overlapping narratives, which provide a complex interweaving of the personal and public representations of a specific place. My work with Café Royal Books (CRB) was central to the formation of the exhibition End of the Season; in the exhibition the photobooks were displayed alongside photographic prints and print ephemera in vitrines.
Research insights:
The research took further previous photographic research exhibited in Rhyl, Llandudno, King’s Lynn, and Colwyn after 2014, concluding the project. The research incorporated drawings, photomontages, photography, film and archival material, which were used to interrogate Rhyl as a leisure destination, relative to the domestic lives of towns from which tourists come, in Lancashire and North and South Wales. The research will also provide the background for a practice-based PhD Proposal, which investigates the notion of the British road trip.
Dissemination:
Public institutions The Grosvenor Museum Chester, Weaver Hall Northwich, and the Vallum Gallery at the University of Cumbria where a selection of images was exhibited in association with Carlisle Photo Festival (2014). Café Royal Books decided to publish this research in three publications (Rhyl Series 2014 – 2015). These books are included in three further box sets titled ‘CRB Archives’ held in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and Museum of Modern Art, New York.