The Circus comes to town - media call
THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN
Photo/Interview/Filming opportunity
Friday 15 January, 10am
The Lowry Galleries
Artists Anderson & Low available for interview whilst installing their new photography exhibition, Circus
The first new exhibition of The Lowry’s tenth anniversary year celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Jonathan Anderson & Edwin Low’s ongoing collaboration. Internationally acclaimed fine art photographers Anderson & Low present their first figurative colour series, Circus, a radical development in the artists’ studies of the relationship between the body, costume, performance and identity.
The subjects are members of an international circus company that performs at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, shot in 2006 & 2008. These colour photographs depict performers photographed in their stage costumes and make-up in two related series – Portraits and Performance.
Anderson & Low also present their first ever video art installation, created especially for this exhibition at The Lowry. Comprising of three film loops shown on three different screens, the stunning footage shows exquisite film of movement by Pasha, an aerial silk performer. This breakthrough piece encourages the viewer to consider the relationship between performers’ own physicality and power, the seemingly impossible exertions of their art and the tools used in performance.
“Circus acts as a blink of a memory, a flashback to childhood or a summation of thoughts remembered into a structure on which we happily climb and clamber”
(Laura Noble: introduction to Circus by Anderson & Low, 2008)
Anderson & Low describe how they approach their work. “we spend a lot of time both on the planning and execution of every artistic concept. We are fascinated by people so our portraits are very much looking inside a person’s character - we love to try to show what we find inside people’s souls. The real key to a good portrait is the communication with the subject. Circus performers have to be very disciplined and determined. But we think that inside they can be quite melancholy. We want to capture this strange mixture of hard work, artistry, happiness and sadness, and we think that this is the essence of their inner world. They have this inner mystery that we show in the pictures, and this is because of the close dialogue that we develop with people that we photograph. In these images we are exploring the relationship between body, performance, costume and identity.”
Anderson & Low are interested in the internal process, the preparation, training and characterisation by the subject. They bring together costume and identity with insight, creating photographs with introspective elements.
Anderson & Low add, “From muscular beauty to melancholy sadness, we are celebrating the human condition captured in simplicity with a range of human emotion and conditions in these surreal surroundings.”
Circus opens at The Lowry on Sat 16 January & runs until Sun 11 April 2010.
Posted on Wednesday, 13 January 2010 under Press Theatre Press