AS the title would suggest, the new Hands In The Earth exhibition in York is rooted in gardening.
In full bloom in City Screen’s café bar until January 16, it features work by seven photographers who have been taking part in an arts project run by YUMI, the York Unifying and Multicultural Initiative.
Their subject matter is the international community garden created by YUMI amid the allotments at Fulford Cross.
“The garden provides produce for people from many different countries, now living in York, to use in their favourite recipes and also functions as a meeting place where they can cook and eat together,” says YUMI project co-ordinator Sasiki Hubberstey.
The photography on show forms part of Hands In The Earth, a YUMI arts project funded by Arts Council England and the Co-operative Bank, aimed at assembling and publishing a book about the garden. Participants from Bangladesh, Malaysia, Kenya, Trinidad, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada and Britain have undertaken workshops with established practitioners JZ (Jenny Zobel), Karen Lennox and Ned Hoste to develop their own creative approaches to writing, photography and graphic design respectively.
The photographers have spent the summer and autumn working with documentary photographer Karen Lennox, experimenting with digital, film and pinhole cameras and alternative techniques such as ‘photograms’.
“Their photographs show a striking diversity of approaches and individual interests: meditative images of plants and produce in muted and vibrant colour; graphic shadows and mysterious shapes seen through a polytunnel wall; portraits of volunteer gardeners, a drummer performing at a garden event and a shed builder dramatically silhouetted against the sky,” says Sasiki.
“For the photographers, the selection of images made for this exhibition represents their individual and collective interpretations of the garden. They describe the images as ‘fragments of the bigger picture taken from the garden’s point of view’, portraying the life and culture of the garden, the ebb and flow of human activity and the passage of time.”
The City Screen café bar opening hours are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 11am to 11pm; Wednesday, 10.30am to 11pm; Friday, 11am to 11.30pm; Saturday, 10.30am to 11.30pm; Sunday, 11am to 10.30pm. Check Christmas and New Year opening at picturehouses.co.uk Prints of the exhibition photographs are on sale via the YUMI website, yumiyork.org
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