Captive Light : Digital Prints by John Phillips

10 Jan-8 Feb 2014

Overview

A collection of prints featuring Venice is on display alongside the images from Paterei prison. Superficially the two series of images evoke irrevocably separate worlds. Venice is an elaborate theatrical setting attracting millions of tourists annually. Patarei feels like a dungeon where no one would ever wish to tread. Yet beneath their equally distressed grandeur these subjects hold much in common. Venice is an island prison, and now a transit camp under permanent surveillance. Its naval dockyards shield the Arsenale, a cultural prison in which all artists now hope to be confined. Patarei too is testimony to a melancholic past, yet today it is empty, liberated and free. In making these works I have employed the technologies of surveillance to explore these parallel worlds.n the process of photographing Patarei, an abandoned Estonian prison, John Phillips became aware of unnerving associations between its architecture and the instrument employed in its recording. He explores the similarities between the camera and the prison.