UNSEEN photography festival AMSTERDAM 2016

This Sunday The Gallery Club presents The Island Variations with work by Iwan Baan, Charlotte Dumas and Christopher Payne.

Open house: Sunday, 18 September, 14.00-19.00 Location: Sotheby’s Amsterdam, Emmalaan 23

In the weekend of the 17th and 18th of September The Gallery Club, a platform for photography, will host her fourth exhibition at Sotheby’s Amsterdam. Islands are the focus point of this exhibition and three photographers have been invited by The Gallery Club to participate.

The islands of Naoshima, Teshima, and Inujima in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea are places of pilgrimage for friends of contemporary art and architecture. Alongside works in public spaces and site-specific installations, the islands also feature numerous museums and collections of contemporary art. They are home to buildings by architects such as Kazuyo Sejima and Ruye Nishizawa (SANAA), Tadao Ando, and Hiroshi Sambuichi, as well as works of art by Richard Long, Christian Boltanski, and Mariko Mori, amongst many others. The photographs by Dutch photographer Iwan Baan that move between tiny details and grand panoramas create a comprehensive portrait of the islands and their fluid transitions between nature, art, and architecture.

Photographer Charlotte Dumas started the large project Workhorse in November 2014, documenting the eight native horse breeds of Japan. Once necessary for farming and transportation, most of these breeds have since lost their practical purpose and have declined in number. Primarily confined to small islands, the horses have never been able to migrate and their future existence is now uncertain.

North Brother Island is a secret hiding in plain sight, located in New York’s East River, captured by photographer Christopher Payne. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, North Brother Island was the site of Riverside Hospital, where those suffering from infectious disease were treated in isolation. After World War II, it served as a housing community for returning veterans and their families. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it became a juvenile drug treatment centre. In the last 53 years, however, it has descended into ruin: buildings have crumbled, vegetation has grown wild, and its primary visitors are now migratory birds. In a city of millions, North Brother Island is a small corner where there is no one. And if you can get there, the rarest of solitudes awaits you.

Throughout the year The Gallery Club organizes exhibitions, dinners and events at different locations in Amsterdam and elsewhere. Every exhibition of The Gallery Club shows and sells work from a wide range of Dutch and international photographers and will have a different theme.

www.thegalleryclub.com