Anything You Want

Situated in a beautiful building, enjoying a glorious lakeside location in Battersea Park, the Pump House Gallery is an inspiring space. It’s great to be able to combine a love of photography with a day out in the park. So if possible, trying to visit when the sun is shining!

Currently showing at the Pump House is ‘Anything You Want’, a group show of contemporary photographers: Walead Beshty, Anne Collier and Annette Kelm. Billed as, ‘highlighting some of the most innovative approaches to contemporary photographic practice’, we went along to find out more.

Anne Collier, Eye, 2004
C-print, Courtesy Corvi-Mora

The exhibition is a real mixed bag of photographic themes and effects. Anne Collier’s Eye image for example has instant impact. Initially it looks like someone’s taken a scalpel out and cut open the eyeball. On closer inspection though you see it’s an eye within an eye, a great testament to the power of digital image manipulation. The depth of detail is superb, though not personally an image I’d chose to have permanently staring back at me from my living room wall!

Anne Collier’s collection of aura Retro Prints are also rather interesting. We might be familiar to the idea of a picture telling 1000 words, but we don’t normally get to learn about someone’s soul through seeing images of their aura. I was fascinated by how a camera could be modified to show the colours and if we really can tell how someone is feeling by this so-called aura that appears around them. What is certain is how mounting a small image, such as a Retro Print, in a much larger frame makes a real style statement.

Anne Collier, Untitled,
Aura photograph ofJohn Baldessari, 2003
Courtesy of Corvi-Mora

Kelm, I Love the Baby Giant Panda - I'd welcome one to my veranda,
c-print, 2003, Courtesy Johann Koenig, Berlin

I loved Annette Kelm’s shot of a gargoyle, amusingly entitled sick! It’s true the creature has a pained expression and the force of water gushing from its mouth, combined with some careful composition, easily explains the title. Far more humour than horror. Her row of seven palm trees left me less impressed, even though the idea is a sound one. Take a series of photos of the same scene with very subtle differences and display them in a row. In this instance it’s a palm tree swaying in the wind. Perhaps it was the bizarre title of the piece that put me off, ‘I Love the Baby Giant Panda, I’d welcome one to my veranda!’

Walead Beshty, Untitled (RY), 2007
Photogram Courtesy Wallspace Gallery

Two of my favourite images were Walead Beshty’s hand-processed photograms. They show crumpled photographic paper, which has been partly exposed to chemicals and light, leaving the end result somewhat in the hands of fate. The photos themselves have then been crumpled and smoothed out, adding another level of texture. So should the kids crumple one of your favourite photos, remember they’re just being artistic.

If you do come along with the kids there’s a child-friendly guide, asking what they can see and what they think about the photos as they go around the exhibition. Whether kids would be interested enough in the images is another matter. I have to confess that it wasn’t the showcase of cutting-edge photographic techniques I hoped it would be, thanks to Anne Collier’s work though it was still an eye-opener – literally!

Exhibition talk 4th October 6.30pm-8.30pm, by Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan, discussing the themes, ideas and practices in Anything You Want.

Exhibition ends 14th October 2007
Admission free
See Pump House Gallery website for further details