Fearful Symmetry

F-ISH & DMP are proud to announce a unique exhibition of giant photographs by Ben Gibson to be seen for the first time at F-ISH Art Gallery in Hastings. The photographs are a selection from work soon to be exhibited nationally.

Gibson is influenced by the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge, the music of Philip Glass and ideas borrowed from Big Bang Cosmology. His photographs illustrate an enigmatic world of chaos and equilibrium, of beauty and eternal recurrence.

Hastings visitors are invited to see the nature of landscape and seascape as essentially motion, a movement, which reveals a gradually altering mystery. Each of Gibson's progressively altering images initially seem similar, and then become dissimilar, first appearing familiar, and then strange, as the visual elements in each frame morph from one shape to the next. The effect is hypnotic, revealing that eyeballs, like cameras, are blind; it's people that see; the instability of the human gaze is exposed, as the object of vision moves along different lines of sight. The viewer may come to question their ordinary understanding of the world after seeing these photographs!

In this, his first non-photojournalistic work, Gibson has created an aesthetic that fuses his fascination for landscape with his sense of wonder at the nature of sub-atomic physics and the quantum world. In Fearful Symmetry, a title taken from William Blake's poem 'The Tyger', Gibson has used a static 2-dimensional image to re-interpret William Blake's ambivalent vision of epic grandeur and impenetrable mystery, as a 3-dimensional world of endless repetition, moulded by chaos and evolutionary change.

Originally destined for a career in science, Ben Gibson spent over 25 years as an international photojournalist working for many of the world's leading publications, and is perhaps best known in the UK for his cover stories in The Sunday Times and Observer Magazines. However, in 2003, after a serious helicopter crash in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, he was forced into a radical change of direction.

In the gallery from right of entrance to left on exit:

N 050° 51'25.92" E 000 36'04.32"
A series of 7 images each measuring 1500 mm x 1000 mm archive inks on alloy bonding

N 051° 30'30.72" W 000 01'04.80"
A series of 3 images measuring 1500 mm x 1000 mm archive inks on alloy bonding

N 27° 24'37.44" E 002 33' 08.64"
A series of 4 images measuring 1500 mm x 1000 mm archive inks on alloy bonding

Ben Gibson is the son of a journalist, and an art historian, so the aesthetic was ingrained in Ben from a young age; he has always been fascinated by dramatic landscapes, and this, coupled with a liking for travel and adventure, influences his artwork, which conveys his wonder of the world.

Following a course in creative photography at the University of New Mexico, Ben studied documentary photography for two years under Magnum photographer David Hurn in Newport South Wales. Shortly after graduation, he got his first freelance assignment for Time Magazine, and six years later, while working on The Observer, found himself described by France's Photo and Italy's Corriera della Sera, as one of Britain's leading photojournalists.

Gibson's passionate pursuit of excellence has not been achieved without difficulty. He has photographed in North Korea, and covered the first Gulf war and the civil unrest in Somalia, where he was held hostage for 5 days in 1991. Incredibly, in 1987, Ben and another journalist were instrumental in the rescue of a British citizen from North Yemen in a story that made world headlines. Then in 2003 he received what he calls his wake-up call, when he survived serious injuries in a helicopter crash in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Since his early twenties, Ben had been based in London, basically living out of a suitcase. His move to Hastings was partly due to his recognition of the dog-eat-dog competitive milieu he worked in, compared to the socially more satisfying environment of the East Sussex coast, which gave him time to reflect and reassess his life and aspirations.

Shakespeare's Hamlet may have suffered a paralysis of will due to an excess of the reflective tendency, but a creative person like Ben Gibson needs to employ his craft like a poet needs to write. His earlier work on various magazines provided a good budget, but it came with an ethos of impartiality. Newspapers are concerned with capturing a story; the quality of the picture can help its credibility, but its not essentially concerned with the aesthetic. Throughout Gibson's career he has used the photographic contact sheet as a primary editing tool in story construction, echoes of which have now emerged in his conceptual photography. Gibson's artwork, entitled Fearful Symmetry, taken from the poem The Tyger by William Blake, is his first non-photojournalistic work, and features juxtaposition between one visual image and another. The prints seen here are 1.5 metres in height, but are intended eventually to be exhibited at twice this height making the wave installation alone 23 metres x 3 metres.

Ben studied mathematics and physics at the Open University, and the nature of space and time still fascinates him. Invoking segmented time-lines, he has tried to capture the 'dance' between physical law and chaos. In the sequence of photographs of The Wave, one image is not the same as another, yet it is of the same wave. The photograph shows how a wave works. Ben Gibson has created a landscape of motion, of change and repetition, enabling the viewer to experience the nature of space, time, equilibrium and chaos, through a visual mantra, repetition as a way of revealing truth.

Dr. Joe Fearn

The exhibition has been made possible through the sponsorship of Digital Media Print Hastings and presents three works.

This exhibition completes a three year programme of exciting new professional art in a dedicated purpose built 'white cube,' not for hire gallery space (the first in Hastings), curated by Simon Hedges and guests. The end of this show will also signify the close of the gallery. The gallery wishes to thank all of you for your support and vision.