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Julie Cassels’ inventive practice explores the medium of photography – the evolution of its production, reception, and its still-to-be-tapped potential. Following a change of career, Cassels has dedicated her time to what she has described as her “obsession” with photography, and to exploring the tension between it and its eventual form – whatever that may take. Having developed a playful yet serious approach, Cassels challenges her medium to expand its possibilities via an ongoing engagement with art history, moving image, sculpture, textiles, collage, and digitally reconstructed objects.

This exhibition looks at how our experience of creating, handling, and viewing photographs has evolved. It showcases the different facets of the artist’s practice, which have never previously been brought together for display. Each of its sections is home to different series of works, which stand alone, yet also overlap – they are often rooted in or united by a deep interest in the aesthetics and semiotics of textiles and clothing. Demonstrating the rich layers of the artist’s work, these include, but are not restricted to: the referencing of photographic history and its relationship to the development of film; the ‘Performance of Viewing’; and modern-day digital re-creation techniques.

In addition to these ongoing series, Cassels has produced new research and work for the exhibition, interrogating a renewed, widespread interest in analogue photographic technology and processes. Here, the artist has experimented with (among other things) wet plate collodion processes, stereography, and cyanotypes. The inclusion of these historical pieces and artefacts demonstrates the interrelationships and materiality of practices through the ages – from photography’s beginnings to the present day – which the artist continues to bring to bear on her own work.

Text by The Double Negative’s - Mike Pinnington

This project was made possible thanks to Arts Council England DYCP Funding

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