© Sid White-Jones - Installation view.
My latest exhibition ‘With Edges Like Glass’ took place this winter at Cambridge Artworks, running from November 15th to 17th, 2024.
All the works in this exhibition were created during October and November 2024 as part of the start of my current residency with AA2A at Anglia Ruskin University.
These pieces focus on the discarded found photographs of others, as my work often does, but introduce new mediums and techniques that require more physicality in their production than traditionally expected from lens-based work.
Exhibition text:
Shattered Celluloid, With Edges Like Glass, Cutting Into My Fingers.
These works began as a collection of photographs not my own. Hundreds of 2x2 inch photographic slides, passed to me by chance on the last day of a house clearance.
I knew, upon receiving them, that they were to be a partial archive - the owner’s family having already removed any photographs of personal significance. Stripped of their original narrative, the remaining images felt detached, anonymous. Yet, within their new-found anonymity I saw an opportunity to reimagine them, to renew the status of these discarded transparencies as something worthy of being looked at.
In doing so, I subjected these fragile shards of film to multiple cycles of physical, chemical, and digital manipulation before fixing them to a new medium of canvas and expanding them to more than one hundred times their original size.
In this new form - more akin to painting than photography - they are harder to box away, harder to ignore.
The exhibition featured a selection of these new canvas-based works, alongside four tray-framed pieces from my 2020 series, ‘Residues’.
A lightbox was also installed on the desk by the entrance which showcased the original 2x2 inch slides which the canvas-based works were derived from.
© Sid White-Jones - 'Residues’ (2020).
© Sid White-Jones - Various publications.
Additionally, there were several publications which I had previously contributed written and photographic work to, including ICBQ Magazine Issue 5, My Daughter Terra by Nina Hanz and Plantiff Press, and The Scaffold by Folium Publishing.
A collection of loose Giclée prints and postcards were also available for purchase.
© Sid White-Jones - Private view.
© Sid White-Jones - Poster.
It was wonderful to display some work from the first two months of my residency and to discuss my future plans for the project. I will continue expanding this body of work during the remainder of my residency, which ends in May 2025.
If you would like to view the larger canvas-based works individually, you can do so on my website here.
About Cambridge Artworks:
Founded in 1994, Cambridge Artworks is an artist-run co-operative of 18 artists' studios within a former cabinet-maker's workshop in central Cambridge. In addition to the studios, the building houses a gallery for exhibitions, workshops and taught courses. Also on the grounds is a bright blue bespoke caravan studio, which is used by visiting artists during our annual summer residencies.
About AA2A Project:
AA2A is an Arts Council England (ACE) Investment Principle Support Organisation (IPSO) that has been facilitating artists residencies since 1999. The programme fosters collaboration between further and higher education institutions and artists, hosting up to six artists for one academic year, allowing them the opportunity to use facilities and resources they may otherwise not be able to access.
About Anglia Ruskin University:
Anglia Ruskin University is a public university in East Anglia, United Kingdom. Its origins are in the Cambridge School of Art, founded by William John Beamont, a Fellow of Trinity College at University of Cambridge, in 1858.
For more info on Cambridge Artworks, AA2A Project or Anglia Ruskin University visit -
W: www.cambridgeartworks.com / www.aa2a.org / www.aru.ac.uk
IG: @cambridge.artworks / @aa2aproject / @angliaruskin
Special Thanks -
To Clio Lloyd-Jacobs at Cambridge Artworks, to all at AA2A and to Véronique Chance and Rosanna Greaves at Anglia Ruskin University.