Mary McIntyre (Solo Exhibition)

In 2009 my work was shown in a solo exhibition at the Third Space Gallery. This exhibition comprised a selection of photographic works that had been produced as part of an AHRC funded research project (£15,000.00), which I was awarded in 2008 for a period of practice-based research (September 2008 - May 2009). This research project, entitled, Reconsidering Landscape in Contemporary Photography, sought to make new links between the study of European landscape painting of the Romantic period, the consideration of landscape within the disciplines of social history and cultural studies, and contemporary fine art photography. The project asked whether, based on these links, new ways might be developed for landscape to be understood and represented within fine art photography. The photography carried out as part of for this research project, presented contemporary landscapes in response to styles and ideas developed in European, British and Irish landscape painting of the seventeenth - nineteenth centuries. Whilst this imagery made reference to these earlier landscape painting traditions, these works were not intended simply to mimic historical works or approaches, but to investigate and critique the political and social ideas that they present us with, and the contexts in which they were made. By bringing together a broad historical range of stylistic and theoretical approaches to landscape, the project found ways in which these ideas could be made relevant today. Most importantly, it asked how the complex political and historical issues brought up by the study of ‘landscape’ could be approached through the photography of contemporary landscapes. The works exhibited as part of this exhibition were: The Palace II (2008), Dead Pool (2008), Ridge I & II (2008), Rocks Forest Descending (2008), Later (2005).