7 – 28 January 2006

Emma Hamilton, Travis Hodges, Sarah Lynch, Richard Page, Léonie Purchas

Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery is pleased to present the 2nd annual Jerwood Photography Awards. Established in 2003 the awards have rapidly become a respected source for talented and innovative artists, identifying promising image makers who have recently graduated from visual art degree courses throughout the UK. The five artists showcased here use photography to address aesthetic, social, philosophical and political issues.

In her series of beautiful photographs, Flores Carneus (Meat Flowers), Emma Hamilton uses the tradition of still life painting to show flowers crafted from animal organs. Her images are concerned with beauty and its natural separation from the grotesque.

Travis Hodges documents the developing youth culture in Falmouth. The modern stereotype of the antisocial teenager is offset by Hodges’ sensitive photographs of young men struggling to make the transition from childhood to maturity.

In Suspended RealitiesSarah Lynch creates a series of ‘table-top landscapes’ in which fruit, leaves and various other natural objects are balanced and poised in carefully staged compositions. The images illustrate a delicate and fragile environment that questions the temporary nature of everything.

Richard Page presents a series of photographs made in familiar but undisclosed residential areas. The home as a secure and welcoming environment is subverted to portray an uncanny and mysterious place where nothing is quite as it seems.

Finally, an 82% increase in tourism is the inspiration for Escape in Israel. With ongoing conflict and dispute in the region, Léonie Purchas explores the growing appeal of Bethlehem, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea as places for the holidaymaker to relax.