Photofantasy Exhibition & Curatorial Essay

Posted on 23 July 2024

WRoCAH-funded CWS doctoral candidate, Lizzie Merrill curated and organised Photofantasy, an exhibition showcasing the groundbreaking works of artist Jo Spence alongside the contributions of 6 other art makers inspired by her practice.

Borrowing original materials from the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive at Birkbeck University of London, Photofantasy was exhibited from the 12^th-15^th June 2024 at Four Corners Gallery in London.

Photofantasy is an artistic method, composed of collaging photographic images, that was first termed by the artist Jo Spence (1924-1992). The purpose of this method was to allow Spence to continue creating visual works that expressed “the stories and actions in her mind” (Spence 2013) while living with exhaustion, reduced access to the outside world and her changing bodily appearance. Returning to Spence’s work retrospectively, there appears a great potential in the method of photofantasy, as a mode of expression uniquely attuned to the challenges faced by people who have been diagnosed with cancer.

When discussing the exhibition in a curatorial essay published on the Polyphony (available to read here), Lizzie wrote: “Overall, Photofantasy asks how Spence’s method of art-making might allow people to express contemporary ideas about cancer experience, over two-decades after its conception. By putting Spence’s works from 1991-2 next to those that have reinterpreted her method today, a really unique visual language for cancer experience has started to form.” (2024)

(https://thepolyphony.org/2024/06/06/photofantasy-a-curatorial-essay/)

Funding for the exhibition was awarded to Lizzie by White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities.