Edward Carey
The aim of the bowery gallery is to offer an innovative, stimulating and diverse showcase for the best emerging talent around, it is a place for engaging with contemporary art that will surprise and challenge.
‘Stepping Back’ is a series of photographs exploring the impact of Brexit on British identity. Spanning the twelve months following the 2016 vote, it seeks out and illuminates everyday moments, revealing a sense of identity, or identities, beyond the screaming headlines of Brexit, Trump and the refugee crisis.
These are snapshots of the messy, the complicated, the subtly optimistic: a conversation between two friends on a tube, an enthusiastic busker, an older person watching the world go by from the relative tranquillity of a roadside bench.
The series is also an opportunity to slow down and absorb the moments of ordinary connection, confrontation, confusion and wonder that are easily overlooked.'
'Identity is at the core of every social movement, it informs who we are and how we are. It shapes and forms our understanding of our place in the world and defines the laws we create for ourselves and by which we live. It unties us and helps create the communities that make up our neighbourhoods.
What will a visual representation of identity look like in the light of the confusion brought forward as a result of the Brexit referendum? In the light of the decision to leave the European Union identity has become almost impossible issue to resolve. Clarity is hard to reach and satisfaction impossible to sustain. The portraits in this exhibition are a visual talking point. They reflect what I consider to be a crisis in identity brought into focus by the result of the referendum. Layered digital collages reflect the way in which mass media, successive political/social networks and the current political climate in Great Britain has effected the way in which we understand who we are.'
Responses
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As you can see from Clare Fisher above a creative writing class responded to my work during the exhibition. I was lucky enough to get in contact with Clare and get my hands on some of the responses. As an artist they were a dream to come across, to have someone respond in that way and to be able to have that fed back to me was wonderful.
'The Quiet Corner of Wetherspoons'
Meg Rowley
(Inspired by the man working in the shoe repair shop in photograph 24 of Ed Carey’s “Stepping Back” exhibition)
I can’t believe she just came right out with it.
In the pub, on our night off. The kids were at her mum’s and I’d put on the shirt she liked, the one that I think Is a bit pansy cos it’s got flowers on it. But she likes it.
So there we are. Two pints in and she’s half a bottle of Prosecco down.
“I want another baby.”
I nearly spit out my Carling. We’re in Wetherspoons, it’s dead quiet, and I swear the fellas at the table next have heard her, because they glance over, all awkward and that. She leans back in her chair the way she does and crosses her arms so her boobs go all squashed together. I focus on her cleavage.
“What do you reckon?”
I thought she was gonna talk about the new fridge, or how she wants me to do more shelves for the garage, or that she wants me to get her one of them Nutribullets she keeps going on about. Not a new kid. I’m not sure what to say, to be honest with you. My mouth goes a bit dry. The fellas at the next table are talking about footy now and I just really wish I was over there, not here, trying to tell my wife that even though I really, really love my kids and her - even if she can be a right moody cow sometimes - there isn’t a hope in hell I want another baby.
“Well?” she says, fiddling with her hair and looking me straight in the eye.
“Oh right, yeah... ok” I say. “If you want love. Yeah.”
She had me in a corner mate, she had me in a corner.
'It Spoke to Me'
Anna
(Inspired by No.9 of Ed Carey’s ‘Stepping Back’)
It spoke to me.
The person holding the cigarette in the foreground was me. Stood still in time. The road mirrored the journey I was on. Across the road, life. The yellow lines on my side showed no parking. Nothing will come to me. I have to cross the road. There the fragrance in the window symbolised the need to cover the smell, the watches, the time that was flying past as I tried to give up; and sunglasses.
The need to hide behind a cigarette.
The bicycles reminded me how health was there to be taken and the pedestrians, people who were not stopped still, like me.
The huge budget sports store was a perfect analogy for the bargain basement of my financial situation. Cutting down on money in every area of my life to enable me to smoke more and more. Killing myself quietly and alone on the pavement across the road from life.
