B RAD and Eleanor Hardwick Present: TWENTY THIRTEEN
Zine Launch + Exhibitions + DJs
For one night only, an exhibition of 42 young international female photographers' work, alongside DJ sets from Flamingods and Hypnotized, to celebrate the launch of Eleanor Hardwick's first duo of zines, entitled Twenty Thirteen.
WHEN: 6 - 9 pm, Thursday 12th December 2013
WHERE: Doomed Gallery, Dalston, London, UK
Read interviews with Eleanor about the event at Huck, Dazed Digital and District MTV.
Drinks sponsored by Sailor Jerrys.
Twenty Thirteen: A Duo of Zines
On 12 December 2013, Eleanor Hardwick will release her first duo of zines with B RAD zines, entitled "Twenty Thirteen: Strange Encounters" and "Twenty Thirteen: What Remains".
"I first started taking photos at age twelve, just months before officially entering the whirlwind that is adolescence. I couldn't find my place in the world, so I decided to create my own world instead. I began to document both the reality of being a teenage girl, and the fantasy that I wanted.
About halfway through my experience of being an "official teenager," my interests in art had not necessarily found me a place in the world, but I started to connect with others within this bubble where we made our own little place; fellow peers on my wavelength inhabited East London, the internet and Rookie Magazine.
I have just turned twenty, and what started as an escape from the hardships of being a teenager is now ending as a sad goodbye to my youth. I hope that in my heart I can stay young forever. For now, I hope that Twenty Thirteen can be a record of my experience as an adolescent, so I can at least pretend."
"Strange Encounters" features just some of Hardwick's expansive portfolio of photographic documentation of adolescents and moments within her teenage life.
"My work has been heavily involved with visually representing my experiences of being a teenage girl / young woman in Britain, specifically through the medium of photography. Essentially, it's about growing up, being a teenager, and the twenty-something-syndrome.
Adolescence is a very confusing time because it is a limbo between being a child and adult, and it is a learning process of finding who you are. To a lot of teenagers that can be very surreal and it is easy to get lost on the way to finding yourself. It is even harder as a girl. I try to convey this in my pictures: the serendipity of youth and the feeling of making it up as you go along. Yet also a strange middle ground between the reality, vibrance and beauty of being young, juxtaposing with the darkness and confusion.
My photography is often a mix of real documented events in my life, and fantasy stories of characters in make believe worlds. Instead of just documenting specific real events, I instead try to document simply the emotions, then staging them in surreal staged scenarios that border both the real and unreal, the natural and the otherworldly. Using my friends and other young artists I meet as my subjects, the works are both portraits of the people who inspire me, and make believe stories of alternate realities, staged on the backdrops of unusual locations that I find close to home. Thus my work is almost like a real teenage diary, but created through the camera; both the real memories, and the emotions and dreams from inside, whilst referencing all the seemingly unrelated things that interest me, and interlinking them in one image to create a new meaning."
Meanwhile, "What Remains" publishes Eleanor's private scrapbooks and journals for the first time, wherein she both extensively plans her photo shoots in detailed moodboards and sketches, and collects the majority of all gig tickets, exhibition tickets, plane tickets, photo booth photos, stamps from all the letters she has received, and arranging them in collages that interlink seemingly unrelated memories through association of colour schemes, aesthetics and themes.
Twenty Thirteen: Launch, Exhibition, DJs and Zine Stalls
To celebrate the launch of the duo of "Twenty Thirteen" zines, Eleanor Hardwick has teamed up with Matt Martin of B RAD Gallery and Magazine, to curate an exhibition for one night only, exploring the work of 42 young international female photographers (including Hardwick) whose work celebrates youth, growing up, rebellion, freedom, sexuality and femininity.
"I felt as a teenager that not only are real teenage girls unrepresented in (particularly fashion) photography but the documentation of it through a real young girl's eyes (rather than the viewpoint of a male adult - which is still dominant in the industry) was also uncommon. Which is why I have found such sanctuary in magazines like Rookie and Lula, and the movement of young, often female artists, that are emerging thanks to the democracy of the internet.
I also feel strongly that there have been few opportunities yet to take offline the work of a collective of artists from a generation raised online, and creating an almost retrospective of that experience. I want this exhibition to illustrate the sheer volume of astounding work that these young female photographers are creating - but whilst that volume can be overwhelming on online platforms, in the atmosphere of a gallery, the pace is slowed down and people can carefully take the work in image by image, piece by piece.
We have taken a DIY approach towards this exhibition, because I wanted to embrace that idea of when you do it young, you do it yourself, and for yourself. I didn't want the stuffiness of frames and the barrier of glass in front of the photographs to take the realness and the honesty away from this work. I want people to get up close to it, to touch it, and to understand what it is like to be young in 2013 by getting so intimate with this work. In a world where everything that my generation has ever created has been instantly uploaded to the internet, becoming immortalised and viewable by millions across the globe, I want this exhibition to rekindle the magic of tangibility and ephemerality… and after one night, it will be gone, much like the fleetingness of youth."
Featuring work by:
Olivia Bee, Saga Sig, Coco Capitan, Stine Sampers, Erica Joy, Sofa Ajram , Alba Yruela, Dana Boulos, Alis Pelleschi , Hana Haley, Sanaa Hamid, Francesca Allen, Monika Mogi, Billie Turnbull, Arvida Bystrom , Alicia Griffiths, Lauren Poor, Rebekah Campbell , Charlotte Rutherford, Mike and Claire , Eleni Mettyear, Hanna Antonsson, Laurence Philomene , Marie Zucker , Allyssa Yohana, Maisie Cousins , Beth Siveyer , Rachel Hardwick, Rachel Hodgson, Elies Van Renterghem , Cheyenne Sophia, Miri Matsufiji , Ayesha Tan Jones, Tara Violet Niami , Shriya Samavai , Katie Eleanor, Lauren Withrow, Maya Kibbel, Anna Ryon, Masha Mel , Sandy Honig and Eleanor Hardwick.