Bill Jackson's new solo show "Cabinet of Curiosities" at The Front Room Gallery brings together three sets of work, "Head", "Imaginary People" and "Relics". Each project asks questions about the limitations of photography and specifically how the line between photography and other art forms, in particular sculpture, is being blurred in contemporary photographic practice

Bill's primary concern is to explore the idea of the photograph as an object, by turning the medium on its indexical head. In effect, subverting the idea that photography is by its nature documentary. Drawing his inspiration from his own museum of curios Bill re-presents his collection of artefacts and objects as new ideas constructed for the camera and so produces transformative moments that are expressed originally in each photograph.

"Imaginary People" uses a collection of paper dress patterns, re-fashioned to create illusory people. The paper skin is hauled up in front of the camera by hooks and threads and left to dangle and rustle in the slight breeze, finding its own shape and description of the human form. The paper appears to mask a solid shape, acting as both a set of clothes and the body itself. We begin to interpret a gesture of the arm, or curve of the leg, giving life to the illusion. But this is a transitory and ephemeral form; only set in place for the camera.

"Head" was first conceived as a continuation of his series "Imaginary People". Bill wanted to make a series of heads to go with his paper people. Using an old hatter's model he started to attach tissue paper with pins in an attempt to sculpt a head, forming the facial features with the paper. But it was at the end of the process, when taking the paper off the hatter's model that Bill discovered something much more interesting. It was the remaining pins that offered an illusion of a head and companions for his paper friends. Rummaging around in his boxes of curios he picked out other objects; bits of leather, bones, drawing pins, plasters, syringes. Playing with both verbal and visual puns, Bill created a humorous set of new friends including; skin head, leather head, pin head, plaster head.

For as long as he can remember Bill has collected things; old fire extinguishers, stuffed toys, abandoned hairdryers, porcelain figurines, odd bits of metal. Scavenged from the hedgerows and kerbsides; they are the flotsam and jetsam of modern life.

His studio in Suffolk is crammed full of his discovered treasures, each one carefully labelled and stored in his museum of curios. The artefacts filling the shelves and cupboards are random. Each object has been chosen on a whim, a response to colour or shape or texture and most importantly its potential to be remade and refashioned into something else. The third and most recent work "Relics" is a series of images of Bill's curios preserved by the camera as studies of his cabinet of curiosities.

As a final twist Bill presents each printed photograph in the exhibition as discreet objects themselves. "Imaginary People III", printed life size, is suspended from a giant coat hanger. "Head" is presented in etymology boxes, turning the print into a rare exotic creature preserved as an archaeological artefact. "Relics" is framed within two pieces of glass mimicking the idea of dissection slides.

"Cabinet of Curiosities" is the simultaneous celebration of the photograph as an object and Bill's own collection of random curios.

Bill Jackson first came to public attention when his dance pictures were selected for the exhibition "Fleeting Gestures, A History of Dance Photography" at The Photographers Gallery in 1980, shortly after graduating from Coventry School of Art. Over the next few years, Bill went on to exhibit widely, with a series of portraits of the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican in 1984 and a major project on workers at the Impressions Gallery, York, 1985. His work was also shown alongside Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn and Josef Sudek.

Moving away from the still image in 1986 Bill spent the next twenty years experimenting with film and computer graphics and began teaching photography, video and multimedia. During this time he was also Digital Artist in Residence at Compton Vernay Museum and Film Maker in Residence at The Royal Pump Rooms Gallery and Museum in Leamington Spa.

In 2006 he made a return to photography and print making and quickly re-established himself on the photography scene, winning Royal Photographic Society medals three years in a row for his prints and recognition by the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, USA for his portraiture.

Cabinet of Curiosities: October 5^th –30^th November 2011

The Front Room

96 Farringdon Road

London EC1R 3EA

020 7833 2330

Nearest Tube Stations: Kings Cross, Farringdon Road & Chancery Lane

Buses: 63,38,19

For more information please contact Bridget or Michael on 020 7833 2330 or via email info@troikaeditions.co.uk. Press images available on request.

Tom currently lives and works in London. His work documents the lives of the people of east London, and highlights the issues facing them and their communities. As Hunter says of his subjects, "I really wanted to show that the subjects I was dealing with were as important as the rich and famous people, in the same way as Vermeer."

He has exhibited work both nationally and internationally, in solo and group shows and is also a Senior Research Fellow of the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

Details: Thursday 14th July 2011

12.30 - 1.30pm
The Front Room
96 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3EA

Tickets cost just £5 and can be purchased here.

This is a child/baby friendly event organised in conjunction with artist Martina Mullaney, founder of Enemies of Good Art.

About Enemies of Good Art-"There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall" wrote Cyril Connolly, in Enemies of Promise, 1938.

Enemies of Good Art is a movement which seeks to investigate the possibilities of combining art practise and family commitments. In particular it seeks to encourage participation by parents and their children in a series of public discussions and art based events.

Writing about the short listed nominees for the 2011 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, writer Sean O'Hagan posed the question: "is Thomas Demand a photographer at all?"

In doing so O'Hagan was highlighting a central debate in photography today - namely the question of how comfortably conceptual and constructed photography sits within our idea of what photography is and should be.

There is a discernible move away from the strictly documentary form, which has dominated the medium since the 1970s and for a new wave of artists working with photography, the quest to present images of reality and truth has been overtaken by their desire to produce work that deals directly with concepts of expression and imagined realities.

"Construction Works" brings together the work of four artists, Christine Erhard, Matthew Booth, Jan Dunning and Lynne Collins, each of whom explore ways to imagine a new reality through the construction of environments and spaces, created for the single purpose of photographing them.

Constructing architectural spaces that can only be seen from a specific camera view point Christine Erhard creates images that hint at reality but are only ever imagined scenes. Christine builds 3D architectural models that challenge the traditional artist impression of an architect's model. Moving away from conventions of linear perspective she brings together disparate viewpoints overlapping fragments of the construction in order to confuse the perspective. We can recognise the architectural landscape but also recognise that something is not quite true.

Matthew Booth makes his spaces deliberately ambiguous, wanting to explore the relationship between the artist and viewer by encouraging us to offer an interpretation of the photograph, through the use of our own memory and imagination. Matthew pares down the space to an almost brutal geometric simplicity, leaving just the walls and windows. An initial acceptance that this is a real room we discover the absence of architectural details: the skirting boards, the doorframes and the electric sockets. Providing us with a minimalist canvas Matthew constructs a space, which we fill with our story, noise and furniture thus fulfilling Matthew's ambition of producing our own narrative for his enigmatic images.

Jan Dunning constructs intricate tabletop 3D models using her deep interest in the narratives of myth and legend to inspire the content of her "Precarious Rooms". Built just to be photographed these domestic spaces must fulfil a visual potential that allows an expression of the ideas inherent in magical realism where the tension between fiction and reality create the intrigue and is the very basis of the attraction of this genre. Under the bright colourful surface a dark and wicked humour sees a shiny disco ball spilling out dazzling fairy lights into an airy room compromised by the shark like thorns, embedded into the dance floor. Poppies dancing in the breeze as the sun streams through the window suddenly take on a triffid like quality as they climb towards the ceiling making the space claustrophobic and uncomfortable.

Lynne Collins, formerly a sculptor working in the film and television industry, uses her experience of film sets to explore her interest in constructed fiction. She builds a new narrative by combining two images together; scenes of decay and abandonment discovered in disused buildings are superimposed with scenes of fruit and flowers. In the series "The Trespasser" Lynne borrows from the aesthetic of Seventeenth Century Dutch masters reworking the symbolism of the still life to make a modern allegory of decadence. In this new fiction Lynne produces a narrative that questions society's casual acceptance of wealth and abundance and its propensity to throw away things and places it no longer has any use for.

Construction Works: 21st June (Private View) – 16th September 2011

The Front Room

96 Farringdon Road

London EC1R 3EA

020 7833 2330

Nearest Tube Stations: Kings Cross, Farringdon Road and Chancery Lane.

Buses: 63, 38, 19.

Working with photography, film and video, Melanie Manchot often engineers events or situations in public spaces to produce her engaging explorations into our individual and collective identities.

She will discuss her use of still and moving imagery and in particular will look at the idea of duration in portraiture. Manchot's approach balances constructed scenarios with the observed and documentary, and her talk will address how both these strategies shape her ideas as well their role in the construction of specific pieces.

Manchot's work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at Haus Am Waldsee, Berlin; The Photographers' Gallery, London; Focalpoint Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Kunsthaus Mettmann, Duesseldorf; and Cornerhouse, Manchester. She has contributed to numerous group exhibitions, including the 52nd Venice Biennale and the first Moscow Biennale.

Manchot is represented by Goff + Rosenthal, New York.

Details: Thursday 9th June 2011

12.30 - 1.30pm
The Front Room
96 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3EA

Tickets cost just £5 and can be purchased here.

This is a child/baby friendly event organised in conjunction with artist Martina Mullaney, founder of Enemies of Good Art.

About Enemies of Good Art-"There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall" wrote Cyril Connolly, in Enemies of Promise, 1938.

Enemies of Good Art is a movement which seeks to investigate the possibilities of combining art practise and family commitments. In particular it seeks to encourage participation by parents and their children in a series of public discussions and art based events.

Dinu Li was born in Hong Kong and currently lives and works in both the UK and China. He works in video, photography, performance and installation, and focuses on the relationship between the personal and the political, the public and the private.

Informed by cinematic traditions, Li's productions are situated between documented facts, oral histories, chance observations and the figments of imagination. Motion and sound is manipulated - prolonged, reduced or distilled - often interlaced to explore the concept of space and time. Evoking a benign intimacy, a sense of elusiveness pervades Li's productions, drawing the viewer's attention to the epochs of time.

Dinu Li's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 53^rd Venice Biennale and at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. He has undertaken residencies in Kazakhstan, China and the USA and has participated in numerous symposiums at Tate Modern, The British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2007, Li published a major monograph of his work "The Mother of All Journeys" by Dewi Lewis Publishing, and was short-listed in the same year for the Contemporary Book Award at the Rencontres d'Arles Awards.

Details: Friday 13th May 2011 (PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A FRIDAY)

12.30 - 1.30pm
The Front Room
96 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3EA

Tickets cost just £5 and can be purchased here.

This is a child/baby friendly event organised in conjunction with artist Martina Mullaney, founder of Enemies of Good Art.

About Enemies of Good Art-"There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall" wrote Cyril Connolly, in Enemies of Promise, 1938.

Enemies of Good Art is a movement which seeks to investigate the possibilities of combining art practise and family commitments. In particular it seeks to encourage participation by parents and their children in a series of public discussions and art based events.

Sachiyo Nishimura is an exciting young artist whose graphic reconstructions of the urban landscapes are attracting great attention. She has been invited to show at the Royal West of England Academy Open in 2011; selected for the 2010 Magenta Foundation Annual; was winner of the 2009 DLA Piper Award and was chosen as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2008.

Drawn to the visual language of industrialisation; power lines, train tracks and telecommunication cables, Sachiyo re-purposes these elements into a new abstracted landscape. Making her work in black and white she is constantly seeking to pair down the visual elements, taking us further from the real world contained in the original photograph into a highly graphic re-interpretation.

Sachiyo was chosen by Sue Steward as April's Critic's Choice.

Details:

The talk starts at 6.30pm (Monday 9th May) and will held in The Front Room Gallery, 96 Farringdon Road, EC1R 3EA.

Tickets cost £5 and can be purchased here.