<*dv_1*>I didnt plan on seeing this exhibition. I was just passing, and for the lack of anything better to do, decided to go in. This gallery is without doubt the worst I have ever been to. The lighting is appalling. What photographs that arent tucked away in some dingy corner are barely visible for the glare bouncing off the glass. The artist has my sympathy. Unfortunately, for Tim Brown I can quite easily separate my sympathy from my critical faculties.
<*dv_0*> According to the blurb, helpfully provided by the gallery and artist, Tim is trying to provide his own take on the urban experience, providing an ironic, contradictory and paradoxical view of the city and the way people think, respond and react to it. Basically this means that Tim has taken lots of photos of glossy advertising imagery in run down dirty parts of London. We therefore get lots of shots of fashion adverts on bus shelters or billboards in discarded fast food packaging strewn streets.
<*dv_2*> Ok, Tim, you have successfully pointed out that there is a vast contradiction between the world that advertisers portray to sell us shit and the one that we all actually have to inhabit. So far, so sixth form. Surely this cant be your only message? All you have to say? It is hardly an original observation is it?
If you call your exhibition Urban Philosophy then it implies that there is a philosophy informing the photography. However these photographs are bereft of humour, humanity or politics. The photographs are soulless. They are as empty as the street scenes he so frequently portrays. For someone trying to make some point about advertising imagery and how we relate to it, Brown is oblivious to his own relationship to it. He is after all, selling images, of images used to sell stuff! Something which appears to have completely escaped him.
I did admire one photograph. A male models head covers the back end of a bus, pulled in at a bus stop. The models hair and the leaves from a nearby tree blend together to form an organic afro. It is neat demonstration of the way advertising and the natural environment blend together so you dont really notice either.
However that one picture is not enough to redeem the exhibition. I couldnt help but think Tims time would have been better employed simply picking up some of the litter he seems so keen on photographing.
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