In Praise of Shadows: Kate Beaugié | Marc Christmas

This collaborative exhibition explores light and shadows through the traditional and alternative photographic processes of the darkroom: silver gelatin covered paper is exposed to light and the chemical reaction of light on the silver creates the image, defined by whatever stands in between the light source and the paper.

Kate Beaugié and Marc Christmas share a passion for Japanese culture / aesthetics, forms of minimalism and light 光 and the resulting shadows 影, as mediums in themselves and as the subject of spiritual focus and expression.

The title of the show is taken from the book of the same name written in 1933 by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, where comparisons of light with darkness are used to contrast Western and Asian cultures; the West, in its striving for progress, is presented as continuously searching for light and clarity, while the subtle and subdued forms of East Asian art and literature are seen by Tanizaki to represent an appreciation of shadow and subtlety, closely relating to the traditional Japanese concept of Wabi sabi.

Within the show, the artists have used Folkestone and the surrounding land’s nature, including extracted flora and views of the environment, to create the work with and they have compiled a selection of artworks that they hope will inspire and enrich the community.

Co-curated by the Laurent Delaye Gallery

IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS

光影

Two analogous journeys, connected by their spiritual communion with nature, through poetic and metaphysical responses to the raw material of light.

Marc Christmas

Marc Christmas lives and works on the Romney Marsh Kent. He is a Senior lecturer of Photography and has been a practicing fine art photographer for over 35 years. His work is represented in numerous international private and public collections. 

*For me the intrinsic beauty of photography is in the making (all prints have value) not the result, which is not so important. It is the process of remembering, the unravelling and overlap.

I work primarily with historical and analogue photographic processes, salt prints, albumen, photogenic with uncertain outcomes. Employing large format cameras and experimental, techniques.

The themes in my work are concerned with places of my adolescence (home and heart). The local spaces of family history (how a location possess you in its absence). The visceral and the loneliness of places, traces, and strolling (the ritual) I am a solitary walker, journeying to undertake pilgrimage to these spaces to find spiritual solace, reinterpreting, memory is my principal concern.*

Kate Beaugié

Kate Beaugié is a full time multi-disciplinary artist, working with light and shadow. Represented by Laurent Delaye Gallery. Kate has artwork in three public art collections, including in ‘VAULT 100’ at The Ned in London, curated by Kate Bryan, which includes 92 of leading British female artists. She has been awarded two Arts Council Grants, aimed to develop her creative practice. She has been an artist-in-resident with the Mathematical Institute at The University of Oxford, with the Sacconi Quartet and was the first artist resident at the Wealden Literary Festival in 2015. She now lives in the countryside near Canterbury after living in Folkestone for 15 years. Her studio and darkroom is still in Dover.

*Growing up on a farm instilled an understanding and love of the natural world that keeps me humble. Living in Glasgow from 1995-2002 and studying Sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art introduced me to the varying amount of sunlight experienced, based on your position on the enormous sphere that we call earth. This is where I adopted the term ‘Light Sculpture’ to describe my work; passed down to me by light scupltors who have inspired me; James Turrell, Gary Fabian Miller, Susan Derges, as I attempt to honour the beauty, simplicity and truthfulness of light through my work. Using various mechanisms to express my awe of nature and natural phenomena, my hope is, to share what I find in the light and dark and to involve the viewer in an immersive experience with my art and with nature “red” raw, “in tooth and claw”. (Alfred Tennyson)*.