Gallery
Frameless- February-March 2011
A ‘Love Your Campus’ photography competition for students and staff from the University of Kent was the starting point for an innovative exhibition, entitled ‘Frameless’ at the Crossover Gallery.
The Mick Woods Photographic Competition, held at the end of last term, challenged staff and students to capture the singular instance which best revealed to them the hidden beauty in the University’s campuses. Competition judges included Steve Kelly from the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, Alison Hollis of the University Photographers and Models Society and Mick Woods, the former Head of Gardening team at Canterbury, whom the competition honoured.
Experiencing the display:
The long run of windows along the length of the Crossover gallery provides an opportunity to play with the traditional exhibition format, creating an internal and an exterior perspective on the display. By lifting the image from the frame, the visitor to the gallery physically interacts with the exhibition; looking out through the translucent photographs to the real landscape beyond, visitors simultaneously find themselves captured against the empty white frames on the wall behind, becoming part of the display. At twilight, passersby experience the exhibition backlit by the gallery lighting, with the photographs appearing like glass negatives moving in and out of their frames. In addition to providing a showcase for the competition entries, ‘Frameless’ liberates the photographs of the campus from their traditionally static position and explores the relationship between the image, the spectator and the plane of vision.
