Elsewhere, Discovery includes Cierra Britton Gallery, founded in 2021 by its eponymous owner as “the first NYC-based gallery dedicated to representing BIPOC womxn artists whose work contributes to the contemporary cultural dialogue across the globe.” Britton is presenting a dual exhibition titled Body & Soul, which is dedicated to Kennedi Carter and Satchel Lee. “Rising above the long and problematic history of Black bodies being seen predominantly through the white male gaze in visual culture, each of these artists have radically established their presence in contemporary photography by telling personal and communal; stories through their lens,” the gallerist states.
“It will be one of the highlights,” says Jansen, who is a photography critic for The Guardian, has written two books on image-makers, and curated Birth at TJ Boulting in 2019, featuring photographers Poulomi Basu, Juno Calypso, Carmen Winant and others. “Cierra isn’t only in photography, which is super interesting and very relevant – photography influences everything, so there should be that exchange with visual culture and art, rather than having photography syphoned off on its own. And there is also a really nice conversation between the work of the two artists [Britton] is bringing.
“Both [Carter and Lee] are amazing artists in their own right, but they’re both working with portraiture – Satchel with self-portraiture – and both will be showing portraits of women taken on sofas or couches,” Jansen continues. “There’s that idea of a safe space, how the body reacts to that safe space, and how different aspects of your subject might reveal themselves in that scenario.”
Alta Vista Arts was founded in Los Angeles in 2023 with a focus on female photographic artists, meanwhile, and is devoting its presentation to JK Lavin. It is showing two of her series: Crisis of Experience, a series of self-portraits taken daily with a Polaroid SX70 camera from 1979 to late 1987, and IF, a series of silver gelatin self-portraits created with photo booth machines in 1977. Both explore female identity, and both have been little-known since their creation. “She’s an incredible artist, but has never shown her work in the UK before,” Jansen explains. “She just hasn’t really been recognised or been paid the dues she deserves for that work for so long, because it connects with so many artists over time. Sadly, that’s a frequent story for female artists.”
Jansen has also been keen to broaden the kind of organisation invited to Discovery, expanding beyond traditional galleries to encompass structures “outside the conventional framework”. Norwegian artists Tonje Birkeland and Maria Pasenau are presenting a two-person booth around performative self-portrait photography, for example, while Christine Wilkinson, Gina Cross, Jo Bradford, and Kate Banazi are bringing a more cooperative approach under the umbrella of Gina Cross Projects. They’re also presenting abstract work that sits more squarely within a fine art practice – as is Mia Liu, who is exhibiting with the Taiwanese Up Gallery.
“Mia creates amazing hand-made photo sculptures,” Jansen says. “She takes photographs out in nature, comes back, prints them herself, then strips out the silver gelatin and makes these sculptures out of them. The objects themselves are beautiful, and also for me they make me think about photography and its relationship with walking, with going out and exploring and how we assimilate that in a physical way.”
