The Open Bridges exhibition is open at Scale Lane Bridge Saturdays during January (6th, 13th, 20th and 27th) and February (3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th) 11.00 am to 3.00 pm. Free entry, come on down, we’ll be there.
Open Bridges led us into some unimaginable places: Victorian dry docks, engine rooms, inside the underneath of bridges, the developing biomass incinerator from the edge of the bridge at Sculcoates, urban industry from the river’s reeds and bulrush. These photographs in the exhibition follow the famous 20th century fashion photographer Horst P Horst. Away from the high glamour and sensual sophistication of taking photographs for Vogue, Horst’s personal project was called Patterns in Nature. It was inspired by photographs of plants taken by Karl Blossfeldt in the 19th Century who built his own lenses and camera specifically for the purpose. Horst likened the images to ‘art forms like wrought iron and Gothic architecture’. Horst took images of plants, sempervivums, saxifrages and shells and tessellated the prints to take them out of context and examine them with such close attention that they became unfamiliar and revelatory, turning them from natural to architectural. In these photographs I’m turning that thought on its head, taking architectural and engineering images and reproducing them until they take on a natural quality; Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, women dancing, a minotaur, lips, the scales of a snake, insect like or a Persian rug…
Click on an image to see the full picture and scroll through, but for the best view check out the exhibition running every Saturday in January and February 11 am – 3 pm., inside Scale Lane Bridge, Hull.
Open Bridges Hull: For the first time in the city’s history all 13 of Hull’s bridges raised, swung or closed simultaneously splitting the city in two at 20:17 hours on the autumnal equinox 2017 during Hull City of Culture’s Freedom Season.
Open Bridges is an independent Hull based project, concept and management by Rich & Lou Duffy-Howard