Zoe Childerly is one of four artists commissioned to create new photography for Brighton’s 3TS Hospital Redevelopment by Photoworks in partnership with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, Willis Newson and the University of Brighton.
The commissions form part of CONNECT – the 3Ts Hospital Redevelopment Public Art Programme and will deliver a permanent collection of photographic artworks sited across 36 public waiting rooms within the new 3Ts redevelopment of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, to open from 2020.
Murray Ballard, Zoe Childerley and Celine Marchbank have each been selected from a nationwide open call. They will create work themed on South Downs, Coast and Brighton, joining internationally recognised photographer, Helen Sear, appointed to produce a Sussex themed commission.
Zoe Childerley has been working as an artist using photography and mixed media for over 10 years. She also Lectures at the University of Brighton and has a strong record in community projects. Her work is developed by interaction with different communities; reflecting a vision of the world concerned with identity, belonging and our relationship to the land and its stories. Zoe has exhibited nationally and internationally and undertaken numerous commissions and residencies in Italy, California, Colorado, Nepal, Jamaica and across the UK.
Discover some of Zoe’s’s past works below, or in the slideshow above.
Dissecting the West
The project title alludes to the desire to measure and frame our perceptions of the landscape and its unfathomable nature, as well as the technologically mediated visual representation of our world today. Within the images there are relationships between formal geometries and natural spaces that question the illusion of the photographic image, the montaged shapes holding other views of the same location.
The geometric impositions onto the photo-object literally impress an aesthetic ideal onto the landscape, scarring the very thing they attempt to augment and interrupting the fantasy of an untouched and untouchable vista. Constructivist philosophies, panoptic social theories of Foucault and the impossible shapes of Oscar Reutersvärd inspire the montaged elements.
This work also engages with the tradition of 19th century topographic surveys of the American West, exploring ways in which space has been shaped and occupied by man. The mythology of the West presents a story of conquest and displacement. I followed the routes of the early survey teams, recording these new lands to be conquered. Dissecting the West is inspired by photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan and his search for order in composition – a perfect balance, where space itself was an element of the overall structure and everything had relevance almost as though he was attempting to measure the sublime.
For more Photoworks showcases, including work from the other artists selected for CONNECT, click here.
