Past Exhibitions

Jason Oddy

23 April - 27 June 2002

The work of photographer and critic Jason Oddy is an investigation of architectural space. His clinical rendering of interiors seeks to explore the ways in which the built environment manages and orders our lives.

Oddy's approach is contemplative. His striking large-scale works capture places as diverse as the Soviet spas, the UN Headquarters, airport chapels, mortuaries and advertising agency lobbies. They challenge us to consider the empty environments they portray, not as the neutral places they ostensibly claim to be, but rather as sites of coercion designed to produce preordained effects in everyone who passes through them.

Right: The Palace of the Nations Series by Jason Oddy © the artist

Oddy’s fragmentary portrayals of such public spaces draws our attention to the various ideas - both conscious and unconscious - embedded in them. If his pictures of Nazi holiday resorts and Soviet spas hint at the now defunct dreams of once promised utopias, then his images of the UN’s twin headquarters in Geneva and New York anticipate an ideally ordered world, where the ability to control communication in all its forms is paramount.

In this exhibition at the Royal Pump Rooms the colour white predominated. In a number of works the blanching of the surroundings purifies the profane, elevates the mundane and conceals unpalatable truths. The message that these pictures would seem to convey is that it is when the world appears at its most innocent that we should be most on our guard.

The exhibition was supported by West Midlands Arts and organised in partnership with The Photographers Gallery, London.