Acquaintance

Curated by Jodi Kwok (QUAD/FORMAT Assistant Curator)

Artists: Deacon Lui, Kota Ishida, Melanie King and Sergey Novikov

Photography often facilitates a journey through time. At a more fundamental level, photography allows us to capture people, places and objects that might have been lost to history, giving us an unprecedented ability to reconstruct images of the past and project our memories far into the future. Photography is taking a more active role throughout history. Future Now looks to connect with the future through the imagination of photography.

Future Now showcases the work of four UK-based artists: Deacon Lui, Kota Ishida, Melanie King, and Sergey Novikov. Each artist’s work responds to the theme of ‘Future Now’ by exploring the ways that the medium of photography can be used and interpreted, demonstrating this through varied approaches that include installation, 3D sculpture, archive, and alternative analogue processes. The artists on display here explore the development of photography materials and creative possibilities, documenting a range of subject matter to explore concerns about the future. They each rediscover the ‘archive’ by adding new elements into how an image is constructed to question the accepted narrative view of history.