Rooted at the centre of Welsh artistic photography since the 1970s, Ffotogallery’s latest exhibition in a string of impressive listings sees the arrival of Belgian-born artist Katrien de Blauwer, who brings her solo retrospective Reprise, spanning an entire artistic career, to Penarth this October.
Katrien De Blauwer’s work with photography is far from conventional. Indeed, she calls herself a “photographer without a camera”, much of her work comprising collage-based images collected from old magazines and papers. Spontaneity is key in de Blauwer’s work, tying together various visual materials to create her own unique language of surrealism. Here is an artist who has such an insatiable desire for creation that barely a day has gone by in the last 20 years when she has not been creating in some form.
De Blauwer’s troubled childhood drove her away from the small provincial town of Ronse at a young age, as she moved to the university city of Ghent, and studied painting. She then went on to study fashion at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, but abandoned this in favour of pursuing collage creation. Saving these images from destruction and creating something beautiful from them naturally has artistic implications far beyond the nature of the images themselves. In an interview, she stated that “creating these works is not a source of joy, but more of neurotic act, without which I would feel unhappy.” Reprise exhibits a life of piecing things together, salvaging abandonment and observing reconstruction as necessity. CHARLIE COTTRELL
Ffotogallery, Penarth, Fri 26 Oct-Sat 8 Dec. Admission: free. Info: ffotogallery.org