MARK POWER – BLACK COUNTRY STORIES
2012-08-06Mark Power was commissioned by Multistory to create a series of urban landscapes responding to his experience of the Black Country – an area hit particularly hard by the economic recession. For many years, Mark’s work has sought to reveal the beauty of the everyday and the overlooked and there is a quiet yet simmering splendour in his photographic observations.
During his visits to the region, Mark noticed an array of thriving beauty salons and gentlemen’s clubs peppering local shopping arcades. Investigating this further, he discovered a number of historical precedents for the success of beauty and sex industries in times of austerity. This led to the making a series of short films shot in a beauty salons and nightclubs.
A further series of photographs shows elegant footwear seen from pavement level against a backdrop of grey concrete and crumbling brick, while a sound installation turns the names used to describe the colours of make-up and tattooist’s dyes into a mantra-like poem. All this serves to complement the apparent bleakness of the landscapes depicted in the large format photographs.
Exhibition runs through till September 15th, 2012
The New Art Gallery Walsall
Gallery Square
Walsall
West Midlands
WS2 8LG
www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk
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