INTERFACE

REVIEW

Fabula

National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford
11 April – 15 June

Reviewed by: Brendan Fletcher »

'Fabula' is an exhibition of photography and film that blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and unreality. The seven artists – Jeanne Faust, Jenny Gage, Todd Hido, Matt Hulse, Laure Prouvost, Christopher Stewart and Sharon Yaari – display a formal and conceptual dislocation from the real. Whilst each documents quotidian reality, their individual strategies acknowledge that artifice is integral to the rhetoric of the documentary and any staging of authenticity.

Much of the work draws upon North American culture for its exploration of contemporary myth making and narrative structures. Jeanne Faust's Balmorhea – a twin screen video projection – presents two views of a street corner in the eponymous Texan town. The events appear to be one and the same, shot from different angles, until the discontinuities between the two screens reveal the artifice of its construction.

Matt Hulse's video projection is a much more polemic affair. A portfolio of American real estate, street bunting and a fluttering Stars and Stripes are shot in grainy black and white and dislocated by a layered soundtrack featuring John Barry's theme for Midnight Cowboy and radio fragments documenting the 1991 Gulf War. The result is a powerful and topical reminder of the nature of American moral certitude and the rhetoric of power.

Christopher Stewart's images document simulations of kidnappings and hijackings staged by the security industry for training purposes. The images are striped to the bone – they are slick and sophisticated if a little too arch and knowing.

Todd Hido's photographs perhaps best play out our capacity to invent and fabulate stories. His images of shacks and apartments on the outskirts of US cities as night falls are understated and poetic. Photographed in ambient light, they draw upon cinematic establishing shots, allowing the imagination to project fresh narratives of melancholy and menace.

Writer detail:
To win a copy of the Fabula catalogue, published to accompany the exhibition, see subscriber prizes.

brendanfletcher@btinternet.com

Venue detail:
National Museum of Photgraphy, Film and Television »
, Bradford BD1 1NQ

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