RPS Gallery opens this June with Blossom Season, a photographic exhibition by 9 Documentary Photography and Print students. The pioneer group, the very first graduates of eclectic new photography course from boomsatsuma, Bristol.
The Class of 2024 marks a watershed moment for Photography at boomsatsuma. These nine graduating students have, for the last three years, spearheaded a new way of learning. They have set the culture, values and the standard of work for all subsequent years to follow.
The exhibition celebrates each student's practice, dives into the multiplicity of the class and their extensive creative processes and themes. Including an array of photographic languages, such as personal narrative photography, landscapes and fine art explorations. With attention to detail at the forefront of the work they produce, even down to handmade bespoke frames, Blossom Season is a deep dive into the world of these 9 graduates.
Their story is a story of belief. Belief not only in themselves and their talents, but in each other. In the ability of a group of strangers to come together to make something that is larger than themselves. Belief in following their intuitions, in not following the crowd through traditional routes of education. Belief in their tutors knowledge, and the passion and dedication of the wider staff at boomsatsuma to put their interests first. Belief in the power of learning, of photography, and creative practice.
BA(Hons) Photography and Print - Boomsatsuma
On this course photographers learn from award-winning artists in Bristol’s thriving photography scene. With leading names like RPS, Magnum Photos and Sony, students work across many aspects of photographic practice - from planning and executing concepts to exhibition design and publishing.
Subjects include; exploring how cameras can tell stories, developing specialist skills in composition, lighting, portfolio and photobook production, digital and darkroom printing, and interactive formats. All while building the co-creation and networking skills needed to become a versatile and professional photographer.
Plan your Visit
RPS House is open to the public Thursday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm.
We want to ensure that everyone shares a safe and enjoyable experience. Before visiting, please read our Visitor Guide and book a ticket to our exhibitions.
Exhibiting Artists
Amber Mylius-King
A Third Space
A Third Space serves as an archive of what should have been.
Drawing from late twentieth century fashion photography, the work explores underrepresented spaces and re-imagines people of colour in traditional contexts.
'Third Space', a term coined by critical theorist, Homi K. Bhabha is defined by hybridity, when marginalised and dominant cultures meet to create something new and unrecognisable, a new area of
negotiation of meaning and representation. In this "in-between" space, new cultural identities are formed, reformed, and constantly in a state of becoming.
In dialogue with this theory, the work's visual language is moulded by the relationship between the photographer and the sitter. Through music, dance, storytelling and cultural symbolism, this
relationship is developed to fortify a third space where sitters are encouraged to shed their façade and be in a state of becoming.
Jachur / Wraith Baker
Walk the Dog
In the beginning it was about finding my digital language and trusting the process, letting myself create without thinking, knowing that in the end what will be, will be.
Looking back, it became a way to centre myself. I started shutting down due to a rapid decline in my mental health. During this time I was tasked to take pictures where and when I can, and it became therapy for me. A neglected way to understand myself, it forced me to confront many challenges throughout the entire process. “Walk the Dog” was born from this connection as I was told that the way I was treating myself would be considered “animal abuse”. Since then I have used this project to get out of the home, effectively walking myself like a dog.
At its core it is still about trusting the process, but that just means trusting myself and remembering that only at the end can you really judge something.
Finnian Hassall
Il: The sun at home warms better than the sun
Jamie Horrigan
Zingiber
Zingiber explores the cultural, historical and political undercurrents of red, or 'ginger hair'.
As a redhead himself, Horrigan questions his personal experiences and places them in dialogue with alternative darkroom processes. Through an exploration of the science, absurdity, beauty and social slurs inherent with the term, the work simultaneously breaks down and builds our understanding of gingerness. The resulting images exist in the space between these ideas, where they encounter each other, and create new potentialities in our understanding.
Taking its name from the family of ginger plants, Zingiberacee, commonly understood as the source for the term, Zingiber is the first chapter in a wider body of work that asks us to question our own role in the understanding of ginger people.
Samuel Simpsion Pattison
Sport
Moving to Bristol, I quickly discovered the strength of sporting culture in the city. Through a partnership with Bristol Sport, I photographed the 2023 winter sporting season in an effort to capture the essence of professional sport in Bristol.
I am interested in the pressures and triumphs that professional athletes face in their respective sports. The work interweaves portraits of the players, coaches and fans with action images of their games to display the impact that sport and these Bristol teams have on a wider community.
MJ Price
No Life on Mars
Through infrared and large-format photography, No Life on Mars explores how the natural landscape can be used to better our mental health.
Following the breakdown of a relationship, Price uses infrared light as a metaphor for seeing the unseen, the 'red flags' and allowing us to perceive our realities in a new light, with b&w large-format film distorting perceptions, masking the truth of stabilising mental health.
Using the aesthetics of romanticism, Price foregrounds the subjective experience of personal relationships, the primacy of the individual, and the importance of healing
Matthew Roderick
Untitled
Through the modification of a twin-lens reflex camera, Untitled is an ambitious attempt to materialise the surreal realm of the mind.
By fixing a manual crank to the camera, Roderick can expose half a roll of film in a single image, breaking the way we see and experience photographs. In doing so, Untitled seeks to breach and expand the barriers of our mind. Furthermore, through an investigation of movement, the work responds to photography’s historic role in our understanding of the physical world, and now, looking inwards, creates unnerving and cosmic psychological visions.
Taking inspiration from early twentieth century 'Thoughtography’, or thought photography, the work is an attempt to photograph the unseen, and visualise the totality of the human psyche.
Kate Feast
Feeding Ducks
Driven by a divine connection to nature, nostalgia and drenched with desire, Feeding Ducks explores the proximity between one’s consciousness in the present and the magic of the familiar.
Using ideas of visual innocence, the work explores the wistfulness of muddling through life as a queer person in your early twenties - lonely yet intimate, sparkling, sensual, riddled with lust yet littered with religious guilt. Feeding Ducks couples a craving for healing and acceptance with waves of bewilderment and cupidity.
Taking its name from a universal yet sentimental childhood experience, Feeding Ducks aims to enchant, comfort and inspire those who have a bittersweet relationship with identity and existence.
Gabriel Schmitt
Home
Home is an exploration of place, of memory, of belonging. Told over two acts, the work first reimagines the artist’s views of the German Alps as he flew over the border, leaving one country for another, each moment held fast in the changing topography.
The second, photographed in Bristol, explores ideas of place, time, permanence, and our position in these through long exposures.
Born in Germany but living in England, Schmitt questions the idea of home, and what it means to us both personally and collectively.