Bank Street Arts

On her website, Sabine Dundure introduces herself as follows:

“Sabine Dundure is Latvian photographer, recently graduated BA Honours degree in Photography at Sheffield Hallam University in England.

Sabine’s work takes a contemporary conceptual approach, mixed with traditional documentary style portraiture. Her work comprises narrative, social meaning and aesthetics.

In her series of portraits, Sabine focuses on niche groups from varied socio-economic backgrounds. These include: Independent youth searching  for recognition, indigenous populations, immigrant sub-cultures, various religious denominations. She explores the correlation between an individual’s  environment and the society  that surrounds them.

Sabine’s clear and simple visual language almost turns into a study of photographic anthropology – exploring issues of identity and representation.  Her work, visually and conceptually, refers to Rineke Dijkstra’s people in transition as well as August Sander’s approach to documenting the people of his time. Her first influences include Latvian documentary film makers and photographers such as Hertz Frank, Egons Spuris, Andrejs Grants and Inta Ruka.

She has previously been commissioned by Sheffield Volunteer Centre and Sheffield Hallam University’s Multifaith Centre to create series of portraits. This collaboration resulted in two exhibitions for National Interfaith Week and National Volunteer week in Sheffield.

The subjects of her photographs come from the environment she lives in. There is a personal interest, sometimes curiosity about the diverse individuals united by similar circumstances. Sabine’ s latest project is about Karen community in Sheffield.”

She introduces the sequence of photographs presented in this exhibition thus:

This body of work combines both text and images and as such the task of writing gallery text about the work  is made even more complex. All accompanying text undoubtedly colours and affects the viewers ‘reading’ or interpretation of the work as well as the general experience of visiting the gallery. Yet this problematic is rarely thrown into focus. How do you write about writing? What do you write about writing? Interpretive or Curator’s texts are a thorny issue in presenting contemporary art – how much should be left to the interpretation of the viewer? What does the viewer need to know?

Alongside this exhibition, six practitioners provide their own interpretative texts in a kind of ad hoc examination of some of these issues. The writers involved are Angelina Ayers, John Clark, Andrew Conroy, Bryan Eccleshall, Chloe Reith and Richard Steadman-Jones. (To view the 6 texts, click here)

Angelina Ayers is Writer in Residence at Bank Street Arts and studying on the MA Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.
John Clark is Creative Director at Bank Street Arts.
Andrew Conroy is Photographer in Residence at Bank Street Arts.
Bryan Eccleshall is an artist who works with image, text, performance and installation. Recent work has engaged with ideas of authenticity and originality.
Chloe Reith recently graduated from Newcastle University with a Masters in Art Museum & Gallery Studies. She has worked on the Jerwood Photography Awards and for Portfolio Magazine and has been recently involved in various freelance writing and curatorial projects with Peacock Visual Arts and Bank Street Arts.
Richard Steadman Jones is a senior lecturer in the School of English at Sheffield University.  His research and teaching focuses on cultural responses to the experience of encountering ‘foreign’ languages, especially in the context of colonial encounters and narratives of exile.