An interview with architectural photographer Luke O’Donovan, curator of ‘Power Structure’ exhibition
“First and foremost, we just want to celebrate the work of some of our favourite photographers from around the world — we started preparing it before the pandemic, but now after a year of gallery closures and postponements it feels amazing that we’re able to put on anything at all.”
All images supplied by ‘Power Structure’ Exhibition - Words by Pete Helme & Luke O’Donavan
A big thank you to our friend & ZoomedIn festival creator Luke O'Donavan for taking the reins last week to talk about his exciting new collaborative exhibition, ‘Power Structures’.
For more than a decade, over half of the world’s population has lived in cities, and between now and 2050 this is forecast to grow by another 2.5 billion people. This massive expansion of urban environments has been a key driver of the Anthropocene, with the footprint of contemporary living far overreaching city limits, and redefining the natural landscape in its entirety.
The environmental transformation of recent years has gone hand in hand with social, political and economic upheaval across the globe. The Power Structures exhibition seeks to make the unseen and often intangible powers that drive these changes visible, through the ways in which they have come to dictate the forms of buildings and cities around the world.
The exhibition features both emerging and established artists from around the world, who together provide an international perspective on some of the defining issues of our time. Whilst the exhibited works draw upon a variety of artistic techniques and cultural influences, there is an inescapable interconnectedness between the subject matter of images produced on opposite sides of the planet.
Industry dominates the landscape from the marble quarries of the Atacama Desert, to the supersized hydroponic greenhouses of the Netherlands, or the disused cooling towers of West Yorkshire. Housing crises are displacing communities in Tehran just as in Los Angeles, whilst property speculation and constant densification are continuously rewriting the layout of cities from Santiago to Hong Kong. In an increasingly globalised society, borders and boundaries are more blurred than ever, and the urgent challenges facing humanity must be addressed on a worldwide scale.
Featuring Artists
Catherine Hyland, Cristobal Palma, Finbarr Fallon, Francisco Ibáñez Hantke, Hagit Keysar, Hashem Shakeri, Henrietta Williams & Anna Minton (writer), Jana Sophia Nolle, Luke O’Donovan, Marcos Zegers, Noelle Mason, Tim Crocker, Tom Hegen
Great to see you're doing well and so lovely to have you back talking to us at M.mode about your exciting new exhibition.
Cheers Pete! Glad to be back, and great to see how much M.mode has moved on since last year, really encouraging how the architectural photography community has developed over the last year, I love the sharing culture that has really grown online.
It must have been an exciting time for your since last year's Zoomed In festival.
Can you bring us up to speed with what has been keeping you busy over the past year?
To be honest I’ve found the last year really challenging work-wise, I’ve had a few busy periods and some really nice commissions with new clients, but it’s been very on-and-off, and things haven’t quite bounced back for me yet.
The silver lining though has been that I’ve been able to focus on some of the areas of my practice other than just photographing commissions, for example mentoring and working with other photographers on planning more education and diversity initiatives in the future, pushing my personal work a bit more and trying to navigate the fine art world with that, and also trying my hand as a curator together with my friend Francisco for the ‘Power Structures’ exhibition we’ve got coming up.
So let's talk a bit more about your exhibition, Power Structures. Firstly, can you tell us the inspiration behind the subject matter?
First and foremost, we just want to celebrate the work of some of our favourite photographers from around the world — we started preparing it before the pandemic, but now after a year of gallery closures and postponements it feels amazing that we’re able to put on anything at all.
The exhibition centres around ideas about how contemporary urban ways of living have a footprint that extends far beyond the city, and the political, economic, and environmental ramifications of our everyday lifestyles can be seen across the world. We wanted to show that we’re all interconnected in some way, for better or for worse.
How did you select the photographers involved, organise and curate the exhibition?
It was the first time we’ve curated an exhibition of other people’s work like this, so we were working it out a bit as we went along. We started out by asking a few photographers who were already on our radar and we had spoke to before, and once the ball was rolling we could start reaching a bit further out.
We weren’t sure how our invitations would be received, but thankfully the vast majority of the artists that we wanted to work with were really enthusiastic and agreed to be a part of the show.
The artists/photographers all create work that responds to architecture/the built environment in some way, but we wanted to move away from the more commercial aesthetic of architectural photography, so a lot of the work is kind of at the boundary of architectural and fine art or documentary photography.
We’ve tried to create a balance between figurative and more abstract works, and some that use the space in different ways other than just hanging on the wall – I won’t give too much away on that, people will have to come to the show to see for themselves!
You opened up last week in Glasgow, how did that go and what do you hope for the London leg of the tour next week?
The Glasgow exhibition was nice thanks, I had only ever passed through briefly for work and it was Francisco’s first visit there too, so we really enjoyed the whole experience.
It was a little quieter than we hoped due to the restrictions in place at the time, but most people who came stayed for quite a long time and we had some good chats, it was really interesting hearing how different places could relate the work to their own experiences, and some interesting buildings and places around Scotland.
We have a bit longer in the London space, so we’re looking forward to welcoming more people to the gallery, it’s been quite busy on the first day already which has been great. One of the things we’re most excited for is the school workshop that we’re running — we’re really keen that the exhibition is for everyone young and old, not just for the typical art crowd, so that should be good fun.
That sounds a great idea, let us know how that goes.
How do you and Francisco (Ibáñez Hantke) meet and what has your working relationship been like in organising and managing the event?
We actually met at Francisco’s first solo exhibition in London which he held during LFA a couple of years ago — we both had a lot of interest in common and are at a similar stage of our photography careers in that we’ve come from an architecture background and are in the early days of pushing to get our work into more of a fine art environment as well.
We were having a chat about the idea for curating a exhibition quite casually at the pub one evening, and it just clicked that it made so much more sense to team up on something, and the result has been much bigger and better than what either of us could have achieved alone.
Francisco has been living in Chile for the first half of the year so that’s come with its challenges, and it’s been difficult managing the exhibition around our regular work commitments at times, but working as a pair we’ve been able to pick up the slack for each other and we’ve got there in the end.
If you haven't already, how can you get tickets and are prints available to purchase?
No need for tickets, just turn up on the door and come in, it’s free entry all week. We’re on at Bermondsey Project Space (10 minutes walk from London Bridge) Tuesday–Saturday (11AM–6PM), and there’s another beautifully produced architectural photography exhibition by Andy Billman upstairs in the gallery too.
A selection of works by the exhibiting artists will be available for sale as limited edition prints, we’re really lucky to have some artists who very rarely exhibit in the UK showing with us, so we’re hoping that their pieces will be a big draw for collectors. We have quite a wide price range so there’s a few pieces that more casual buyers might like for their living room too.
All the info on the exhibition is on our website too at www.powerstructur.es
Lastly, what is next for you this year? Have you got anything else up your sleeves?
First of all — a nice long break!
We’re working on taking the exhibition to some other cities a bit further from home too, but everything has been so precarious this past year that it’s probably best we keep that under wraps for the time being.
Now that restrictions are being slowly lifted I’m looking forward to spending more time on my personal photography projects again rather than just commissioned work, and just the everyday stuff like meeting up with mates that has been tricky over lockdown.
And of course can’t wait to meet up with some of our photographer friends at the next Mass Collective get together!
