All enquiries please email denisefelkin@hotmail.com
Phantasmagoria -a sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream.
Hendon Beach, Sunderland 1991
About Me
I am an artist whose main medium is photography. I strive to photograph in a unique and original manner. My images are a combination of my vision of the polarities between both my inside and outside world, dark and light, ugly and beautiful, good and evil, right and wrong, day and night and so forth.
When I was a young child, I would to close my left eye, look at the landscape and imagine what I saw was a framed canvas in the shape of my eye. My first camera was stolen whilst on holiday at Butlins at the age of ten. My second camera was stolen at Glastonbury Festival at the age of eighteen. At the age of twenty-one I finally discovered my passion for photography and have yet put my camera down.
I am fascinated by the illusionary and the surreal that use tricks of light, scale and perspective to choreograph the viewer’s experience and allow the viewer to stand in front of work imagining how to enter the space. I am influenced by artists such as Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Henri Cartier Bresson, Diane Arbus and John Stezaker.
I am particularly interested in working with existing/temporary spaces, constructions and staged installations that hint at unsettling ambiguous scenarios and contemporary environmental issues based around; construction, deconstruction. I recreate the elements of the natural/unnatural world in an urban surreal experience where natural forces and physical form inform the work and creates a logic to what is there, I am also interested in new age of harmony and quantum mechanics where consciousness changes reality.
My work relies on intuition and a visualisation. I make a conscious decision to make the ordinary surreal and remove it from the norm everyday life. I have an apocalyptic vision of the world being of ecological destruction where mankind goes one step too far in plundering our planets natural resources. I recycle sculptural based art/ images into photography where the natural and the man made meet and come together formally and conceptually as an abstract darkness and enjoyment.
The people I work with
The artists I have been working with Mutoid Waste Co are notorious for building sculptures out of scrap and other found objects, they create create giant apocalyptic style installations within festivals, cites and galleries and are influenced by Mad Max and 2000AD. Mutoid Waste Company in work across Italy and London, and use raw materials (metal, fibre-glass and found objects) into large-scale public art installations. These immense sculptures all have been photographed in key locations at numerous popular events in the public arena.
In collaboration with Mutoid Waste Co I have created a collection of images that fuse figurative apocalyptic creatures in the form of scrap sculpture, photographed and printed to look of a painterly quality. We have exhibited not only in galleries but public spaces, urban environments and at music and arts festivals, both nationally and internationally.
I have curated and installed artwork and shown large scale works in the public spaces both inside and outside art galleries at Brighton Photo Fringe Festival 2006, Subway Gallery, Joe Strummer Subway, London 2008 and outdoor projections at Rocket Festival, Granada, Spain 2008. Phoenix Brighton, Brighton Fringe Festival 2009, at Glastonbury Festival, 2009 -10
My photography has also been projected onto the façade of houses in Brighton, hung in the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. During 2006 was commissioned by Brighton and Hove Council to create limited edition prints for long serving employees. And also in 2006 Brighton and Hove Arts Commission Grassroots project helped fund an exhibition curated by myself and I created a fine art multi-media exhibition that fused the disciplines of photography, painting and sculpture in a public space. In December 2007, my photography was part of an online interactive photography montage created by artist Helen Marshall, at The Photographers Gallery.
What I am doing now
I also have been working as a photography tutor in Brighton and London. I teach both digital and analogue photography courses at City College Brighton and Hove within Adult and Community education, I also work freelance in community education at Photofusion and Phoenix Brighton. I previously facilitated photography workshops for the BBC as part of the BBC BLAST tour in 2007.
I am a studio member at Phoenix Brighton; this is the largest artist run organisation in the South East. I rent studio space and work in the in-house gallery as part of my membership commitment. In my spare time I like to travel, I have traveled Australia, Thailand, India, USA, Canada and Europe
e-mail denisefelkin@hotmail.com
or denisefelkin@hotmail.co.uk
EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS
Photomonth. The Light Restaurant and Bar, Shoreditch, London, UK October 2011
Photomonth Open. RichMix, Shoreditch, London, UK October 2011
Photomonth Photofair. Spitalfields Traders Market London, UK October 2010
Photomonth Open. RichMix, Shoreditch, London, UK October 2010
Brighton Photo Festival Everybody Inn. 2nd October- 16th November 2010
End of the Road Festival Jam Events Bar September 2009
Glastonbury Festival Trash City Backstage Bar 23th-27th June 2009
Brighton Festival. Phoenix Brighton Gallery Photo Art and sculpture exhibition with Mutoid Waste Co 2009
Glastonbury Festival Groovy Movie: Solar powered cinema 27th-29th June 2008
Brighton Photo Fringe Festival Coordinator of interactive Digital Photography Competition October 2008
Subway Gallery, London. May 2008
The Rocket Festival, Ahhama De Granada. Spain. May 2008
The Photographers Gallery, What haunts you? London 2008
Brighton Fringe Festival Designate, 2007
Brighton Photo Fringe 2006 EnvironMental Open House,funded by Brighton and Hove Arts Commission Grassroots Project
Brighton Fringe Festival Fruity.2005
Phoenix Arts. On Site 2004 Brighton
Brighton Fringe Festival 2004 @ Fruity, Brighton
The Glow Project 2003, Adelaide Crescent. Hove.
Brighton Photo Biennial Wind Swept Cloud:Duke of York Picture House, Brighton. 2003
Brighton Photo Biennial 2003 @ Phoenix Arts Asssociation. Brighton
Bubble Wrapped 2003@ Jacobs Photography.Birmingham.
Bubble Wrapped 2003@ The Custard Factory Birmingham.
Floor Plan 2003@ Phoenix Arts Asssociation. Brighton
Sussex Open 2003 @ Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Brighton
Hang Ten. 2002 @ Phoenix Arts Asssociation. Brighton
Neo-pix 2001 Group exhibition @ Phoenix Arts Asssociation. Brighton
Brighton Fringe Festival 2000 @ The Cafe Motu, Brighton
European Award for Female Photographers 2000 @ Provincia di Prato, Italy
SouthEast Arts Support for Individual Photographers Award 1999
Time 1999 @ Brighton Media Centre, Brighton
Artmart 1999 @ Phoenix Arts Asssociation. Open Weekend, Brighton
Brighton Fringe Festival 1999 @ The Burlington,
The Brighton Festival 1999 with Kala Phool @ The Essential Bar, Brighton
Bad Sense of Humour 1999 @ The Bond Gallery, Birmingham
Brighton Fringe Festival 1998 @ The Argus Building Collective, Brighton
Brighton Fringe Festival 1997 @ The Kensington, Brighton
Signals Festival of Women Photographers 1994. Work included in the national exhibition catalogue
Final Degree Show @ University of Sunderland 1994
The Bridges Centre, Sunderland.1993
Palace Media Centre, Tamworth. 1992
Mutoid Waste Co show Trash City, Glastonbury 2007
All images ©Denise Felkin 2011
Any enquiries please email denisefelkin@hotmail.com
Date Modified 8th August 2011