IMMINENCE - UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
graduation exhibition + artist talk by Esther Teichmann
Esther Teichmann
The graduating students of BA (Hons) Photography at the University of Portsmouth present Imminence - https://imminence-exhibition.co.uk/, an online project space that showcases the variety of practices undertaken and is build to become a continues space to learn, develop and share.
As part of this, they have organised an online artist talk by Esther Teichmann, which will run on Friday 26/06 at 15:30 BST (16:30 CET, 10:30 EST, 23.30 JPT) on ZOOM
Book a ticket: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/6815928207740/WN_m4CSjVpMRByfEkrv5t2XTA
Esther Teichmann (b.1980, Karlsruhe, Germany)
Esther Teichmann (b.1980, Karlsruhe, Germany) is a London based artist working across still and moving image installations. Recent solo museum shows include Heavy the Sea, Transformer Station, Cleveland and Mondschwimmen, Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim. Collaborations include Phantasie Fotostudio II with Monster Chetwynd at John Hansard Gallery, and the co-curation and editing of the exhibition and book, Staging Disorder, with artist Christopher Stewart that included work by An-My Lê, Sarah Pickering, Richard Mosse and Broomberg & Chanarin. Teichmann received an MA (2005) and PhD (2011) in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art (RCA) and is Head of Programme of the Master of Research, and Coordinator for Critical and Historical Studies at the RCA. Esther is currently working on a monograph of visual works, essays and fiction by the artist, On Sleeping and Drowning, forthcoming by Stanley/Barker.
Within Esther Teichmann’s orphic world, we move from beds to swamps and caves, in search of a primordial return. Here, the literary and the visual merge, the photographic loosened from its referent, slipping in and out of darkness, cloaked in dripping inks, bathed in subtle hues, evoking a liquid space of night. Narratives of loss and desire are entangled like the glistening tentacles wrapped around the bodies depicted. Central to the work lies an exploration of the origins of fantasy and desire and how these are bound to experiences of loss and representation. Our relationship to otherness, the maternal, female pleasure and the act of looking and being looked at, are themes which are returned to across and through a layering of voices and visual approaches.Like the coral said to be formed by Medusa’s blood spilled upon seaweed, Teichmann’s work transforms one thing into another, sliding between autobiography, fiction and myth, still and moving image, sculpture and painting.
"Teichmann's utopian island world lies somewhere between black and blue seas, between here and now and the fantasy of where one might go, or perhaps, even, where one has been.
…Esther creates spaces of speculative fiction, which enable us to feel beauty, to be okay with feeling too much. As the dance Yvonne Rainer has noted: "Feelings are facts." Looking at Esther's bodies as indivisible from landscape (caves as mothers, water as mothers, beds as lovers, mouths as homes, seashells as orifices, sisters at every turn. Esther's work is haunted by night dreams and daydreams, of drowning and sleeping. Esther is not afraid of beauty.” (Carol Mavor)
www.estherteichmann.com