In Summer 2008, Me and two friends decided it would be a good idea to buy an inflatable dinghy from ebay and try and paddle down 300 miles of the Dordorgne in France. We bought a 5 man dinghy to leave room for our bags, It was not nearly big enough. We hitched to Argentat where we would start only to find that the river was at its highest and most dangerous for many years, and all canoeists had stayed away, and the campsites we had envisoned being full of young folk were empty. Never-the-less we bravely (stupidly) went on our three week float down the river, only to almost die by the following methods: Sailing into dams and weirs, extreme hayfever, mosquitoes bites, Alcohol poisoning from three plus bottles of red wine a day, a diet of bread cheese and my invention ‘The Dordorgne Dal’, Helicopter interventions from the French Air Force. I’m not kidding about that last one, apparently for about three or four days river navigation was banned due to the aforementioned dangerous levels of water, so a french air force helicopter buzzed us for about 10 minutes before we figured it might be because of us. The photos you see are happy and smiley, because it was safe to get my camera out without fear of drowning it, however what is left out is fear, loathing, extreme drunkenness, defecation, tears, some blood, and a very confused stretch of the french countryside left in our wake.

Here is the link to the set

The Beginnings of what i’m working on……

This series is from last Easter and was exhibited at the ‘Bandstand’ Exhibition that along with many other Exhibition and Showcases utilized empty retail spaces on Sheffield’s Moor Shopping Street.

“The images in this series are from a Christian worship event which brought together many Pentecostal churches in the Sheffield area, Pentecostal congregations have a literalist reading of the bible and place particular importance on worshippers having direct communion with god, this may involve ‘speaking in tongues’ or letting go of one’s body.
These photographs are the beginning of my attempt to document the beliefs that people hold, whether they are religious, political or social, these images allow viewers to consider thoughts that might seem alien to them, and forces us to re-evaluate our own convictions.”
(Statement from the Exhibition Literature)

See the rest of the images here

If Not Now, When?

I am in small group exhibition at Access Space, Sheffield next week. All the photographs artists deal with contemporary issues within our culture. Whatever that means. The space is pretty small and is used as a computer resource as well as a gallery, so its a fairly interesting space to be exhibiting. But anyway, the Preview is on Friday 8th May from 5.30 – 8.oo. So make the pilgrimage. After that it runs for a month from the 9th May til the 9th June, so plentry of time to check it out.

Watch this space

Ross Noble at The Lescar. Copyright: Tim Morris

Although hailing from Newcastle, stand up comedian Ross Noble mainly resides in Victoria, Australia. In a weeks and days before his UK tour, ‘things’, the recent Victoria forest fires threatened to cancel the shows. On the 10th February, Noble’s agent issued a statement “Ross Noble has confirmed that his home has been destroyed by the bush fires in Victoria, Australia. However he and his family are safe and well, and plans for his forthcoming tour remain unchanged”.

This image was taken at Ross’ first UK warm up show, at The Lescar pub in Hunters Bar, Sheffield. I (over)heard first hand the details of the fires, and although I will not repeat the details here, it is a credit to Ross that he even bothered to show up. As he joked in the performance to a crowd of only 100 people, “My latest tour is called ‘things’, but the ironic things is, I no longer own any things”

Ross was very kind to allow me a few minutes to photograph him, being the comedian, he went through his roster of ‘comedy facial expressions’ which were interesting, but I liked this image best because you can tell despite the wide eyes, his mind is still on the story he has just recounted. I had hoped to do a few different types of shot, but given the situation I kept the shoot brief.

Here is my work as displayed.

Some Visitors plus Tim Goode viewing some work.

But the must scathing reviews came from these Art Critics, who held a sit down protest against our work. 

(Edit: Some images from the opening night at sarahpurpleface flickr page)