Sunil Shah speaks with artists Gordon MacDonald (MacDonaldStrand) and Mark Duffy about the ways they use photography to reveal alternative narratives about political phenomena, practice institutional critique, and produce work that responds to photographic history, politics, and the conventions of image-making.
The discussion will draw on their works on display at Peckham 24, situating the artists’ practices within the current landscape of British politics, and questioning the shifting role of photography within a visual field increasingly defined by mistrust and polarisation.
MacDonaldStrand's False Flags directly confronts the symbolism of nationalism and the visual language of propaganda. A “false flag” operation is an act committed with the intent to disguise the actual source of responsibility, pinning blame on another party. This work has been developed from an earlier project titled No More Flags, in which photographs of extreme right-wing marches in the UK and USA were edited to remove nationalist flags. Calling this process “cathartic Photoshopping”, MacDonaldStrand’s aim was to withdraw the asserted legitimacy of the flag-waving, faux-patriotism of these marches. False Flags takes large-scale flags made of images from the No More Flags project, originally produced for display in their entirety, and presents them as burial flags, folded in the ceremonial shape of a triangle. The project critiques the unbalanced exposure that right-wing fringe groups are given in the contemporary media landscape, as well as the commercial systems at play in the distribution of these images.
Having exhibited at Peckham 24 in 2017, this year Mark Duffy returns to the festival with three new works that invite viewers to participate actively in scrutinising the construction of British politics, and the politics of Britishness. A Parliament of Empty Gestures is made from appropriated photographs produced and distributed by the House of Commons over the past two years, commenting on the performative and confrontational nature of political debate, the repetition of prescribed political gestures, and the constantly shifting blame game that is modern politics. On Pugin closely surveys the ephemera and dirt found on the carpets of the Houses of Parliament, inviting more detailed scrutiny of a nuanced mess. The series is named after Augustus Pugin, the architect who was driven mad by his work designing the Houses of Parliament. Finally, The British Heritage in Colour embeds phraseology from political discourse within a wider landscape of stereotypical narratives about power and hierarchy. The series of movable collage works invite the viewer to agitate an official, fixed perspective on history.
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MacDonaldStrand is the collaborative partnership of Clare Strand and Gordon MacDonald. Their joint practice centres on institutional and industry critique, producing work that responds to photographic history, politics, and the conventions of image-making.
Mark Duffy is an Irish artist based in the UK. His works explores issues of power and national identity. He uses photography and multi-media installation to build recurring motifs that reveal alternative narratives about political phenomena with absurdity and humour.
Sunil Shah is an artist and writer from Oxford, UK. His PhD research is on Documenta 11 (2002) and is affiliated with Afterall Research at Central St. Martins, University of the Arts, London.