The Photographer’s Gallery is one of my regular haunts where there is always something interesting to see (and a great bookshop). This weekend I visited Jessica Fairbrother’s exhibition, ‘Constellations and Co-ordinates’.
Seeing images reproduced on the internet or in printed form just doesn’t cut it for her work - it’s only when you see it on the wall that you can appreciate the intricacy, delicacy and textural quality of her images.
The key elements of photography, performance and embroidery are central to her work, resulting in beautiful images that are moved beyond the one dimensional into a different space and dimension. Her images are often self portraits with a strong performance element, drawing on her earlier career in acting.
‘Photography, performance and a needle are central to Jessa’s practice. She uses the body-as-site to explore communal meanings and is concerned with making explicit the moment when performed gesture and gaze of the viewer collide. She frequently appears in her own images, piercing and embroidering them to employ process as action. Needle perforations and thread puncture the skin of the photograph, extending image-objects beyond a single time and space.Things embody feelings and the body is a material, where experience can manifest itself through stitches.’ Jessica Fairbrother
