Over two hundred international artists, video artists, and photographers, thirty exhibitions, and one key question: how to represent our relationship to natural and social space? We’re off to the town of Derby for the 8th edition of FORMAT International Photography Festival.
The theme of “Habitat,” which frames this edition of the festival, is vast and multilayered. Encapsulating both our everyday life and that of our planet, the representation of our ecosystem reveals numerous points of ambivalence. The relationship between humans and their environment is deeply problematic, ranging from admiration to exploitation, from domestication to preservation. The works on display vary in terms of subject and technique, from analog photography to virtual reality. The Habitat theme takes stock of the way we relate today to nature and urban environment, landscapes whose vague contours are fluctuating and breaking down.
The featured artists, some well-established, others emerging, display their works all around this charming town. Among FORMAT’s many treasures, visitors will have the opportunity to discover Laurent Chéhère’s “Flying Houses.” Shown at Déda, these images are veritable poetic satires of social classes. Detached from their foundations, the dilapidated buildings soar majestically.
The recent works by Sohrab Hura, on view at the Quad Arts Centre, offer, in turn, prophetic snippets. Photographed at the heart of the hottest region in India, the landscapes and human bodies seem to be burning up. The dry, stifling air is a foretoken of humankind’s likely destiny.
Human domination, nature in distress, and habitat migration are the core concerns of many artists, a sign of global awareness. At the Quad, Ester Vonplon is exhibiting photographs of thermal blankets used to protect glaciers in Switzerland. Seen in closeup, these covers resemble diseased skin, cracking and flaking, marred with cuts and scrapes.
Taking flight and motion-blurred, the animals photographed by Lee Deigaard, on display at Pearson’s, seem reduced to ghostly presences. A veritable hunt, these images capture and corroborate the destruction of our natural landscapes, forests and fields.
Is nature doomed to becoming just a human construct? This question is raised by one of my personal favorites, Stephanie Rushton, exhibiting at Pearson’s. Using exotic plants and digital creations, the artist constructs a natural environment that appears shrunk, as if enclosed in a bell jar. Utopian and cynical, the cultivation of this artificial greenery is apposite to the fractured walls of the building housing the exhibition. Fissured and faded, the structure likewise seems to be succumbing to decay.
Taking place at the heart of the Midlands, FORMAT is the largest UK photo festival. The events and exhibitions are held at institutions central to the life of the town of Derby. The venues include the Quad cinema and arts center; the historical Pearson Building and formerly a public school; the Déda Centre for Dance, Contemporary Circus and Outdoor Work; as well as the Cathedral and the University of Derby. The works displayed in the different locations dialog with each other’s subjects and contents, with the cultural heritage, and with the town as a whole. A flâneur, the visitor will enjoy strolling from one place to the next, growing aware of their own relationship to the environment and their own responsibility for it.
Julie Bonzon
Julie Bonzon is a Ph.D. student in Art History at the University College London (UCL).
FORMAT17 Festival — Habitat
March 24 to April 23, 2017
Various locations
Derby, UK
