Featured image ©Mechthild Belton
Many members of the Central Group have been busy preparing for the group’s 2025 exhibition, due to run at Espacio Gallery in Bethnal Green Road from April 15 to 20, focusing on the theme “Listen”.
Out of the 24 attendees at our regular meeting at Lumen in Tavistock Place on March 12, one member showed work relating to our theme of the month, Art Deco, while five presented personal projects. The rest of the time was taken up by members showing work they intend to display at the exhibition.
Among all the different art forms which adopted the characteristics of the Art Deco movement in
the 1920s, Mark was most drawn to examples in London’s architecture, and most of his images
(with the exception of Bibendum) were shot within a square mile – the Savoy Hotel, the Adelphi
Building, the OXO Tower.
©Mark Friend
Nusse showed a selection of images inspired by horses, humans, and their interactions. Included
were some arresting images of long, flowing human hair mingling with similarly spectacular flowing
horses’ manes, and tender close-ups of feeding hands with whiskery, velvet muzzles.
©Mechthild Belton
Janet continued to share her project ‘out and about’ around not only the British Museum, but also
at Tate Britain and the Royal Academy. As well as using double exposure to create interest in
compositions including the glass roof of the British Museum Great Court, Janet worked her
hallmark magic using joiners and tracings to enliven base images of architectural facades
©Janet Nabney
Dorota took us on a curated tour of highlights from contemporary exhibitions in some of the great
European art galleries including the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou
Centre, and the Collection Pinault, also in Paris.
Thamesmead is an urban housing estate at the eastern limit of the Elizabeth Line. Through Edith’s lens it
becomes almost a dystopian universe, a gritty, grainy film set – all moody grey clouds over
brooding, Brutalist architecture, hardly a living soul in sight.
Pauline is using her photographic practice to find expression for the grief and dislocation one feels
after a bereavement, when one is walking through particular locations where one used to walk with
the person who has now gone. Making very subtle use ICM, some monochrome exposures in
otherwise colour multiple exposures, and turning down opacity in post production, she is creating
scenes of mundane city corners, seen almost out of the corner of one’s eye, and yet imparting a
profound sense of unease, of a world suddenly thrown out of kilter.
