Gary McLeod "Habit: Looking at the Japanese Landscape"

Gallery H.O.T

This event has ended.

Last year, Gary McLeod employed a 130-year-old antique lens with a digital SLR to re-document the landscapes of photographs taken of Japan by the HMS Challenger in 1875. Intended to inform a British audience, as were the originals, McLeod’s images (exhibited at Gallery HOT in June 2007) also re-informed a Japanese audience so familiar with their landscape. Having completed that series, he has continued to document the landscapes that the Challenger couldn’t, recording things and places that would be of interest to an occidental eye. The resulting series “Challenger +” consists of some 120 documents of places around Japan and in keeping faith with the antique lens, this collection of images continues to inform the unfamiliar and re-inform the familiar.
These images will be on display at Gallery HOT as the first part of an exhibition titled “Habit” that will continue at Camberwell College of Arts in London in July. In this first part, the images will be on display in an open album form for visitors to look through as they wish. This process of viewing will then be documented with video and consequently projected onto an empty photograph album in London alongside the original album from part one. In this second part, the exhibition aims to not only inform a British audience with unfamiliar images of the Japanese landscape but also to compare viewing habits with those that are familiar with it. A final part of the exhibition that compares the Japanese and British viewing habits is earmarked for later in the year.

Reception: April 14th (Mon) 6-8pm