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Field Notes & Explorations

This exhibition (ppt:2) brought together a sustained body of work representing eight years of Kandhola’s practice in an exposition of his working methodology through a collection of photographs, paintings, drawings and annotated Polaroids (ppt:3-11). It presented the contribution Kandhola’s working method makes to the field of photography practice to an international audience. This is a methodology usually evident in practice such as Derek Jarman’s Sketch Books, or in Stephen Gill’s, photography manipulation, or Simon Roberts’ use of contact sheets.

The work explores themes of diaspora and contemporary identity through Kandhola’s ancestral narratives, representing the ephemeral characteristics of its subject matter, investigating the transitory situations and emotions of a life travelling through time and place, between home and the unheimlich –Freud’s disturbing ‘unhomely’. The work’s significance is its use of working methods not usually seen in photographic practice to articulate a subjective engagement with these themes.

The drawings were produced with a meditative awareness of the landscapes of India and Britain. Influenced by the European landscape tradition and by the tradition of British suburban garden culture, they are a reminder of the importance placed by diasporic Punjabis, and Britons, on the cultivation of land for functional and aesthetic purposes.

The contribution that this body of work makes to the field of photography is indicated in its subsequent showing at the Impressions Gallery as part of ‘Flatland: A Landscape of Punjab’, Bradford, UK in May 2010 (ppt:16-18), subsequent critical review in source magazine (ppt: 15). The Impressions Gallery was established in 1972 as one of the first specialist photographic galleries in Europe. It has grown to become one of the UK's leading independent venues for contemporary photography, supporting and encouraging artists who have challenged and changed photography. 6,500 people attended the exhibition there.