(James on set at Secret Cinema, February 2011)

I met James Ostrer in one of those strange twists of fate when I was working for Secret Cinema – an interactive, cult film event put on by Future Cinema that allows audiences to interact with a film, bringing the screen to life using actors, dancers and set designers. My job was to help re-create Covent Garden circa 1948 in a huge disused tobacco factory in Wapping for the showing of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s iconic masterpiece ‘The Red Shoes’. I sourced props and collaborators for this incredibly ambitious project where over 16,000 people came to watch the performance over 18 days. It was a hugely exciting project to work on and I had the freedom to source some really exciting people and businesses to work in partnership with us.

For this particular event I managed to get the multi-talented London-based milliner Victoria Grant on board, who suggested I get in touch with James whose work she said would be perfect to use in one of our installations. Following Victoria’s advice, I summoned James to our makeshift office and set in east London on a sub-zero morning in January last year. He arrived (very much in character) wearing red sneakers and clutching a large portfolio. The rest is history…

The man behind the shoes…

Thirty-three year old English artist James Ostrer spent seven years toiling away at the English National Ballet before sustaining a serious injury to his back after a piece of scenery ‘fell out of the gods’ onto his head. He left the theatre that day in an ambulance and has never set foot backstage again. After this traumatic event, James decided to focus full-time on his passion for photography, which he found suited him better as a means of expressing his creativity.

When I first saw James’ work I was both intrigued and repelled at the same time. James is clearly a natural talent, but at first his photographs left me feeling a little uncomfortable. He explores themes that most of us are too scared to look at or even dare to delve in to. His images are very provocative and they certainly have a way of penetrating you from within.

Initially, the pictures I was drawn to most were James’ ballet-themed images (which I ended up using as they fitted perfectly for the ‘Red Shoes’ Secret Cinema set). There seemed to be an interesting story there, and I wanted to find out more…

(Dancer 1, 2009)

During James’ time a set painter he watched thousands of ballet performances and rehearsals. He was fascinated by the contradiction between the grace and brutality of such a tragic art, which mirrored his own inner turmoil. He found a reflection between the art and those who are participating within it, and how ultimate personal sacrifice is demanded through the unquestionable dedication to the craft.

James’ work illustrates a combination of the back stage addictions, sexual transactions and the fetishistic desire that surrounds the inner community, framing it with destructive emotions of competition and jealousy. These drives seem to pull this exceptional physical expression into a world of hidden darkness. The work I was drawn to were those based on an autobiographical experience he had while working for the ballet.

(Arrows. 2009)

“Obsession with perfection is undeniably the driving force of ballet. However, there is often a cost to the human soul. The pieces that are displayed here are about the blood, sweat, and the containment of pain in this art and within the people who occupy and surround ballet.” – JO

James Ostrer is only at the beginning of his career and he has already had his work hung in the National Portrait Gallery to great acclaim in the 2010 Taylor Wessing Prize. The now almost iconic image that he had on show (and was nominated as curator’s choice), was a C-type print depicting an uncomfortably naked Nicky Haslam sitting in Lucian Freud’s chair that explored the intimate relationship between the ‘socialite’ and the ‘artist’.

     (Nicky Haslam in Lucian Freud”s chair, 2010)

“The mark of portrait that works is when it stops you.” – Curator and consultant Anne Braybon

Journey

For me, by far the most interesting project James has been involved with to date is ‘Journey’.

James was chosen along with a cast of contemporary artists and designers from a wide range of disciplines to create a unique, interactive, multimedia art exhibit for a campaign against sex trafficking created and supported by Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson, activist Sam Roddick (daughter of the late Body Shop founder Anita Roddick), and Lifetime Achievement Award-winner in Human Rights, Helen Bamber OBE.

The aim of ‘Journey’ was to unmask the denial that keeps the bustling sex-slave industry hidden in plain sight. It also aims to help people understand the plight of those forced to work within it because of human trafficking, and to emphasise that slavery within prostitution and commercial sex happens much closer to home than many think – sometimes literally around the corner.

The art exhibit (including Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor, Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell, leading British graffiti artist MODE2, BAFTA-nominated art director Michael Howells, acclaimed playwright Simon Stephens, graphic designer Mike Dempsey, award-winning illustrator Laura Carlin, Elena Varga and Anthony Micallef), uses seven shipping containers arranged as if waiting to depart at any moment, to chronicle the seven stages of a trafficked woman’s experience. The role of each artist was to depict one stage of this tragic journey into prostitution: Hope, Journey, Uniform, Bedroom, Customer, Stigma and Resurrection.

‘Journey’ was launched in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2007 when the installation highlighting the heartbreaking conditions of victims of the sex trade, bought traffic to a standstill.

(JOURNEY, London)

This controversial and powerful art installation has had a huge worldwide success and has even traveled to the USA, where the Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg gave the project substantial financial support.

(JOURNEY, Madrid)

(JOURNEY, New York)

(Actress Emma Thompson, talking about the project in New York)

James joined the project during this transatlantic leg of the journey. He conceived his installation ‘Customer’ as a way of inverting the relationship between prostitute and client and turning the customer’s voyeuristic gaze upon himself.

Ostrer visited six brothels in three British cities, which he had lived in at some point in his adult life. The locations of the brothels were close to the homes he had lived in, all on or near a high street. They were either advertised in a local newspaper, clearly sign-posted from the street or found by a simple Internet search. James then went into the brothel as a customer, where he was allocated or chose the prostitute himself. He gave his camera to each girl, paying her to take photographs of him in any way she wished. In the results he appears to be in the kind of uncomfortable situations their clients usually would place them in. James offered no artistic direction to the prostitutes and had never met or discussed the project prior to the session. The prostitutes gave him detailed instructions on how to pose and the facial expressions they wanted to capture; the artist only removed his clothing when instructed to and the prostitutes determined when the photographic session ended. The photographs are displayed in sequence and have not been edited. Out of the six prostitutes half spoke poor English, or very poor English. Only one was a U.K. national.

Ostrer explains “This installation is one way for the customers to reflect on what the girls have to go through”. This process resulted in some disturbing photographs accompanied by heart-wrenching quotes from the prostitute, which go some way to explain the sense of entrapment each trafficked woman experiences.

(James’ ‘Customer container’ for JOURNEY, 2010)

Death, Sex and Re-birth

This body of work is an exploration of human emotions and vulnerability using themes such as gluttony, sexual compulsion and addiction, all of which he draws upon using his own life experiences. His photographic work is dramatic and dream-like and each project he undertakes is dipped in dark humour.

(Mattress, 2009)

This was clearly depicted in a series of intimate family portraits in James’ first solo show at a London gallery in 2009. Within these he was exploring the greater issue of human vulnerability and the fear of loss.

In large format photographs he depicts an image of his father pregnant, confronting the paternal repulsion of pregnancy. In another, James replaces his mother with himself during his birth, apologising for his existence or perhaps taking full responsibility for himself. My favourite image is one where James callously lays his family members on cold morgue slabs facing his terror of their inevitable demise.

(Family Portrait, 2009)

In this exhibition, he also created a documentary essay of a friend on his deathbed in full vivid colour juxtaposed with grainy black and white photos depicting the same friend supposedly full of life enjoying purchased sex on holiday. In this body of work, Ostrer heightens the distance between these two experiences, one seemingly dreadful but ultimately real, the other supposedly a pleasure but ultimately a fraud.

These works are not presented to shock but to invite the viewer to reflect on the darker aspects of human nature whilst having a forgiving undertone that accepts human fragility. The artist seems not just to be inviting the viewer to look closer at themselves, but also to confront their shadows. I wanted to ask James about this particular project as I had mixed emotions about it, so we met over lunch and chatted…

LBBOA: Why did you want to tell this story?
JO: Because I became fascinated by the contrast between my friend Laurie’s apparent happiness while enjoying bought sex in Buenos Aires, contrasted against him dying in hospital alone. He ended up meeting the future mother of his child on this holiday and sadly he died when his son was only two years old.

Wow. What happened?
He met this girl from Paraguay when we were in B.A, Argentina. Laurie and I were working together at the ballet and another friend said, “Lets go on holiday with him!”…and I thought, why not? You’ve just worked for three months without a day off. I didn’t realise that it was going to effectively up being a sex tourism holiday.

So you took your camera with you?
Sure doesn’t everyone take one on holiday?

I guess so…but why did you take intimate pictures of him and these girls he was buying sex from?
Well at the time I guess I considered them bizarre holiday pictures.

And you since turned them into something else?
As an artist, I didn’t think I was making art when I took them. I was just recording something I found crazy to be around…I think life is spent accumulating and obsessively making stuff and ‘art’ is basically curation and the development of original ideas.

So what were you going to do with the pictures?
The thing is, I never did anything with them. In many ways I was kinda ashamed of them and I never processed the film until a few weeks before the show.

But then something obviously made you keep the film and then process it later.
It was like having a box full of sin. You’re a Christian right?…so you go to church and there’s a place where you can confess your sins and lay them at the cross and let go of them. The mirror for me would be the catharsis of expelling this experience. I don’t see it as…well what happened was I ended up photographing him while he was dying as well. I often saw the mother to his child who hardly spoke any English and his two-year old son. On these visits I used to give them money to help them go back and forth from the hospital. The whole thing was really sad.

So hang on…you were working at the ballet, you go on a holiday with this guy. He meets this prostitute, he then brings her home, has a child with her…
Yeah, he loved her. But, let me explain…the reason I photographed him dying wasn’t because I wanted to show the work one day. Sometimes when I do this kind of photography it is actually to create an emotional separation between me and the scenario which otherwise if I totally engaged with it would break my heart into too many pieces.

It’s ok, I get it James…So by then you had begun exploring photography…(he’s not really listening and trails off)…
When I have the camera in front of my face it briefly makes me feel like a tourist into the sadness of someone else’s life, rather than it also being a part of my life. It’s a form of emotional detachment I guess.

Ok…going back to Laurie, you photographed him and so when did you decide to do a project about parts of his life? You had this old film – and so how did it all come together?
I had this old film that was burning a hole in my head, but I never had a reason to develop it. I think by then the film hadn’t been processed for seven or eight years, so I presumed the film wouldn’t develop. I thought it would be destroyed. Anyway I tried it, and the images were intact.

So when you processed the film back then – where did you do it? In your studio?
No, in Brighton at my dad’s house.

Is he a photographer as well?
Yeah. I was brought up in a darkroom, watching him do his printing.

You see, that’s what I want to know – it says more about you as an artist. Did your father photographed for fun?
No he worked commercially and he exhibited his work as well – mostly in Paris. He was a brilliant photographer.

Why have you never told me?
Well, it seems I clearly like talking about myself…(James guffaws with laughter at this point)…I don’t know…He paints now. He gave up photography. He hates photography now.

Why? Because it has got too modern with digital?
No – not at all. He was a pioneer. He did some of the first digital, commercial work. But, I think…well…one day he decided to pick up a paintbrush and he did a painting.

So you pretty much followed in your dad’s footsteps but the other way round.
Or he followed in mine! You could simply see it as we switched trades. You know, we have been so intrinsically linked it’s unbelievable, which is why I did a portrait of us co-joined.

Oh…I haven’t seen it.
The one where our torsos are joined.

No…I don’t recall.

Ok…so lets get back to the nitty-gritty…let’s talk about YOU some more. Tell us a bit about yourself…who are you and what do you do?
I am James and I am an art-aholic.

Did you study photography or art formally? And if so, did you study art with a view to a professional career?
I did an art foundation course at Chelsea College of Art fifteen years ago and I passed with a distinction but fell out with my tutor because she was pissed off about the fact that I wouldn’t have an affair with her. The truth is, I wasn’t the only one she tried it on with. On top of that, I was out of my head a lot at the time, and I couldn’t deal with being in a white room with that amount of open-ended structure. So on the basis of a wild weekend I moved to Bristol and decided to study something else – the same degree as a girl I fancied.

Goodness! You were easily lead astray! So did you stop making art? How did you then go from there to working as a set painter?
My degree involved business law and accounting, and when I wasn’t doing that I was thinking about girls and drinking which didn’t leave much room for making art. To help fund my studies I used to be a film extra, which led into me doing ‘stand in’ work for a couple of actors. Hanging around on set one day, I met this guy who was also employed by the English National Ballet in the props department. I begged him to try to get me a job, as I had been away for six months making a documentary in South East Asia that never came off the ground, and I was broke. He had told me how much the stage crew got paid and that they spent most of the week on tour back stage chatting with dancers. He said the jobs were ‘dead man’s shoes’ and that no one ever left as it was money for old rope. One day someone got really ill and that was it, I was ‘in’. I started loading trucks for them, but soon realised that I could paint the sets instead of carrying them. I sneaked my way in when the resident scene painter retired!

So when did you start taking photographs?
I’ve always taken photographs. At the ballet, I used to shoot the dancers backstage and sell some of the prints I made. I also did some commercial photography work for catalogues when I had the time.

Your work is quite unique and controversial, can you explain it to the layman…can you talk us through the process of creating a piece please.
I use my family and myself a lot in my work. This just started as an organic approach but has almost become ceremonial these days. The piece (shown above) where I am holding a cross-bow and a ballet dancer has three arrows that have penetrated her. I originally planned for this amazing black male ballet dancer to be holding the crossbow. He was incredible. His body was perfect and the way he held himself was like a perfectly carved roman statue on the shoot. But when I later looked at the shot I just couldn’t engage with it and felt the photograph looked like an amazing flyer for a nightclub in Ibiza. I had tested the lighting on myself that morning before anyone arrived and even though on this occasion I had tried, I landed out using the picture of myself once again!

How does your work develop – on paper, in your head?
When I open the gates in my mind it just doesn’t stop and I ‘ sleep, so I do this about every couple of months. I write and draw all my ideas down in notebooks and try going back to sleep but it doesn’t work and goes on through the whole night. I get a kind of jet lag from these nights and my heart races in an uncomfortable way.

What specific feature of photography appeals to you? Why do you choose to work in this way?
I love photography for its versatility in terms of where you can do it and how you can get people to participate with what you’re trying to do.

What do you always seek to express in your work?
I am not always trying to seek to express something, a lot of the time it’s about a process of the making. For example with the pictures of all my direct family members on a morgue slab was very much about the experience. Mortality of family members particularly my mum, has always been one of my biggest plagues to the point of disability. The shared experience of taking the nine separate photographs was phenomenally moving for me. There were so many different dynamics in the group ranging from the oldest member of the family who wasn’t keen at all, to there also ending up being a lot of laughs. Particularly with my mum who when she was lying down under the sheet she started doing ghost impressions. This experience alone has cut through my fear massively. I recently had the unbelievable opportunity of spending hours watching cremation piers in Katmandu. The sense of acquaintance with the end of life and dead bodies reflected back to me to some extent what I had experienced by doing this shoot with my own family.

Why is it important for your work to be understood? Who is your work for?
I don’t always feel like it needs to be understood. I also love it when people just enjoy it aesthetically. My work is for anyone, but what I hope is that there is a sense of reflection when people see my work, and then for them to respond to that feeling.

How do you get inspired?
I am always feeding myself everyday, whether it is going to the national gallery or reading a copy of Heat magazine.

What have you learned from another artist lately?
That if you get your mate so drunk he gets caught urinating in the cupboard of your private members club you don’t lose your membership but get charged a massive amount of money.

What are the challenges you have found in your work?
My job involves a huge amount of logistical planning which doesn’t always interest me as much as the actual shooting.

You have quite an impressive collection of other artists work. What are/is your favourite piece/s?
There are different strands to my collection. I have photographed some of my friends in their studios for years and they have given bits of work here and there. I have bought a lot, and others I have inherited. It’s hard to choose a favourite piece as there are so many stories and sentimentality attached to all of them.

You have undertaken some public/commissioned work – how do you feel about your vision being directed by third parties?
I have a lot of freedom in the choices I have in making my work, so I regard it as a good personal discipline for me to have to work with other people when I do. You may not always agree with how someone wants to finally curate or edit something, but I think as long as you try to be as true to your own creative process without your ego getting in the way too much things generally work out. One of the strangest directions of a third-party was when I worked on the ‘Journey’ project. I got a phone call from the production manager of the project who said, “We have just projected a picture of you with your genitalia out on the major of New York’s office wall and he isn’t happy and wants it to be pixelated for him to fund the show in his city.” I thought, fair enough I’ll do that.

What kind of work did you begin making as an artist?
Charcoal drawings and sculpture with my dad’s best friend who lived in Paris when I was eight. I was with him covered in plaster dust with the light streaming in through the huge windows of his studio. I was sitting at an easel while he repeatedly made me re-draw one of his sculptures 50 times. My arm and hand ached so much and it was this weekend that I said to myself, I am an artist and this is what I want to do for life.

How do you want your work to make people feel?
That it penetrates them somehow.

Would you ever consider moving from photography to film? Is this something you have ever thought about?
I have already been making some films none of which have been released publicly yet. I absolutely love it as a medium. I showed a couple of short films to a great friend of mine, who manages some of the most established artists in the world, recently and she was dying with laughter and she said that I should become a comedian. I said to her, “but is it art then”, she said, “What is art?”…I suppose if we really knew what the answer to that was we would stop producing it.

Your 20 Quick Questions:

1. Home is…where I can go to the loo with the door open. This includes my house, my mum’s house, my dad’s house, and my girlfriend’s house.

2. Where did you grow up?  In my therapists room.

3. An object you would never part with?  A sketch by an artist left to me by someone I promised I would never sell it.

4. What is your life philosophy?  Love as you wanna be loved.

5. What makes you laugh?  Christmas at my mum’s.

6. What makes you cry?  People I love dying and most recently the sad stories on X-Factor. Are you serious?!…OK, I’ll admit I cried when I watched Britain’s Got Talent for the first time and I heard Susan Boyle sing.

7. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?  To give up smoking by someone on their deathbed from lung cancer the last time I saw them.

8. What talent would you most like to have?  To be able to swim front crawl and breathe without swallowing loads of water.

9. What do you want to say to the leaders of your country?  What’s the honest answer to why we are investing in some dictatorships and taking out others?

10. What are your favorite places in London? My uncle’s four person cinema in his spare room, my girlfriend’s bedroom, the chicken swarma kebab shop round the corner from my best friend’s house and The Wolseley restaurant.

11. Where did you last go on holiday?  I went to Vegas for four days then flew straight to the Himalayas to hike up to base camp.

12. Where do you go to be alone? An empty theatre during the day.

13. The creative masterpiece you wish bore your signature?  I don’t really have that feeling, as I appreciate what I do and what others have done. Being pushed though, any of Caravaggio’s work, because if I had done it, I would keep it in my house and just stare at it.

14. The best thing you ever bought, stole, or borrowed?  I borrowed the battered old chair that Lucian Freud painted his mother in for a shoot, it literally resonated its own history.

15. The most interesting person you have ever met?  On a day-to-day basis, my girlfriend. She is inspirational and completely bonkers. As a one-off, I would say Ted Hughes the Poet Laureate. I was chosen to show him around my school when I was thirteen. He had a magnetism that was inexplicable and incredibly troubling. I spent an hour with him and when he left I cried privately as felt a sense of loss and I never knew or understood why.

16. Stress management: hit man, spa vacation, or Prozac?  I can’t see a need ever for a hit-man because if it’s that bad you gotta do it yourself. I have swapped the Prozac for spa vacations these days as I realised its better to flush the rubbish out rather than put more rubbish in.

17. Favorite texture?  Clean sheets, smooth skin and crunchy food, but not in that order.

18. Favorite ride of all time?  On the back of a Honda Goldwing motorcycle from Paris to the south of France through a thunderstorm.

19. If you had a superpower, what would it be?  To stop rape being used as a weapon of war.

20. Finally, what do you want to be remembered for…?  Listening to people’s problems and making them laugh.

Whatever happens, I will definitely remember James for those two things…I have a string of text messages from him that I look at when I’m feeling blue which make me screech so loudly, I instantly feel a million times better. Thank you for all the laughs, that’s probably the best gifting a person can have…

James’ most recent work is on show until the end of the year in Notting Hill at Merchant Archive, 19 Kensington Park Road, London W11. The photographic exhibition entitled ‘The Romance of Perfection: A Photographic Friendship Between Maria Kochetkova’. To be continued…

Drawing on British and international works in the Tate collection, this display takes post-war art in St Ives as a starting point through which to explore common characteristics in European and American modern art from the 1930′s to the late 1970′s.  It is the Tate’s most extensive collection display for over ten years.

The three rooms in the display are titled Object, Gesture and Grid respectively. Object reveals how cubism and surrealism influenced form in the mid to late twentieth century, from Pablo Picasso to Barbara Hepworth.

The materiality of paint and its connection to subconscious expression is considered through gesture. Recalling significant European modernist movements through the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Karel Appel, Gesture considers the influence on St Ives artists such as Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon.

Works by Joseph Albers, Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd illustrate how the grid has dawn the painting, sculpture and architecture together, making the viewer both psychologically and physically part of the artistic experience.

Visit http://www.tate.org.uk/stives for more information.

Text credit: Tate

The first being, Picasso: Peace and Freedom by Lynda Morris and Christopher Grunenberg (£35 hardback/ £24.99 paperback).

The second tome is called The Picasso Book by Neil Cox and is priced at £17.99.

Both publications are available at most bookshops or order on line from either Amazon or the Tate Shop.

A huge museum for contemporary arts and architecture opens in Rome this weekend in a bid to draw avant-garde art lovers to a city defined by its ancient monuments and Baroque fountains. The MAXXI museum designed by Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid is the latest and most ambitious project to try to refresh the Italian capital’s image of a decadent city bent on its glorious past.

The museum marks its opening with a three-day extravaganza that included the unveiling Thursday of inaugural exhibits; a party Friday night for 5,000 artists, fashionistas, aristocrats and other VIPs; and an admission-free day for a fortunate few thousand ticket holders.

For Hadid, who became the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, the challenge was to work with the “layers” of Rome’s artistic past and bring a new space for art in the city.

“Rome has fantastic light,” Hadid said. “The idea of this project is about layering and bringing in light to the space so that you have a naturally lit space — and to give the curators tremendous freedom in the way they can organize exhibits.”

The MAXXI is located in the Flaminio quarter of Rome, in the area of the former Montello military barracks. The complex houses two institutions: MAXXI Arte and MAXXI Architecture. For more information, please visit: www.fondazionemaxxi.it

Text: The Associated Press

Christie’s announced that they will offer one of the last of the great female portraits painted by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) at the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 23 June 2010.

Executed in 1917-18, Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III) is the third and final painting in a series of three portraits commissioned by the Munk family of their daughter Ria. One of the last and most modern of Klimt’s full-length female portraits, the painting offers a glimpse into the working methods of one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century and is expected to realise £14 million to £18 million.

Critics are already rushing to shape the debate on the nominees for the annual prize, which awards £25,000 to an artist under the age of 50.

Work by all four finalists will go on display at Tate Britain on 4 October 2010, and the winner will be announced on 6 December 2010.

Last year’s Turner Prize was won by Richard Wright (see image below), who is represented by the Gagosian Gallery, which will have a chance to net back-to-back wins, as it represents Dalwood.

For more information, visit: www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/

Fact: The Turner Prize, which was established in 1984 to promote contemporary art, is named after the 19th-century painter J.M.W. Turner. Past winners include Damien Hirst, Martin Creed, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Tomma Abts.

Photographer Caroline Irby spent one year tracking down a child born in every country in the world, then photographed and interviewed each one.

Caroline found children from 185 of the world’s 192 nations and asked each to tell their story in their own words. The children’s unique accounts of leaving their countries of origin, their hopes for a new life in the UK and their observations of cultural differences, provide a thought-provoking and often humorous insight into the effects of globalisation.

A selection of Irby’s visually and emotionally engaging photographs will be on display alongside a series of short films the artist made for Channel 4, which features a number of interviews with the children.

V&A Museum of Childhood
Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9PA
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)20 8983 5200
Email: moc@vam.ac.uk

FREE admission

Open 10.00-17.45 Monday-Sunday (last admission 17.30) including 10.00-21.00 on the first Thursday of every month.

Caroline Irby Biography

Caroline Irby (b.1977) had her most intense photographic lesson at 18 when she worked at Magnum in Paris three months immersed in great composition and surrounded by her heroes. After graduating in French and Philosophy from Edinburgh University in 2000, she entered the world of photography. She has been published in The Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian Magazine, The Observer Magazine, Marie Claire, and The Independent among others. Caroline also works for aid agencies including Save the Children, UNICEF and Oxfam alongside commercial assignments. Her  work has received awards from the Observer Hodge, the BBC and The Commonwealth Photographic Awards and has been exhibited in the UK and internationally. Caroline was a member of Network Photographers until 2005 and is now represented by Abby Johnston.

For more information about Caroline’s work, please visit www.carolineirby.com

Text credit: Verve Photo

It’s hard to believe Tate Modern is only ten years old, given its status as a London landmark and a major player in the city’s art scene (it’s the world’s most visited modern art gallery).

To celebrate Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary, the gallery will host ‘No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents’. For this free arts festival, Tate Modern is inviting 70 of the world’s most innovative independent art spaces to take over the Turbine Hall. The festival will fill the iconic space with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film on 14 – 16 May 2010.

No Soul For Sale is a festival that brings together the most exciting non-profit centres, alternative institutions, artists’ collectives and underground enterprises from around the world. The participants are encouraged to show whatever they choose, be it art, performance, video, publications, or simply themselves. Neither a fair nor an exhibition, No Soul For Sale is a convention of individuals and groups who devote their energies to art they believe in, beyond the limits of the market and other logistical constraints – it is a celebration of the independent forces that animate contemporary art. The festival is an exercise in coexistence: organisations exhibit alongside one another without partitions or walls, creating a pop-up art village.

The gallery will stay open until midnight on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 May for free late night performances by artists and musicians.

www.nosoulforsale.com

The V&A in London is commissioning a group of international architects to build a series of structures throughout the Museum which will respond to the theme of the ‘retreat’.  The starting point for these experimental projects will be the idea of a small enclosed space representing an escape from the chaos of urban life to an area for peace, contemplation, shelter or creativity. One of the central aims of the exhibition is to move away from explaining architecture through drawings and models and instead allow the visitor to experience the architecture itself.

For more information, please click HERE.

Exhibition runs from 15 June – 30 August 2010 in The Porter Gallery and throughout the Museum – Free admission.

Opening times: 10.00 to 17.45 daily (10.00 to 22.00 Fridays)

V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL
Tel. +44 (0)20 7942 2000

The magazine engaged with young British photojournalists working in the tradition of ‘concerned’ photography and recognised early the talent of figures such as Brian Griffin, Martin Parr, and Chris Steele-Perkins, who have gone on to achieve wide acclaim.

Click HERE for more details.

Exhibition runs from 14 May – 26 September 2010 in the Photography Gallery 38A, Free Admission.

Opening times 10.00-17.00 daily, Friday open late till 22.00