Josephine Pryde uses photography and sculpture to explore the nature of image making and display. For the Turner Prize she has created new works using domestic kitchen worktops. To make these pieces, Pryde placed objects on the back of the worktops and then exposed them to sunlight in London, Athens and Berlin. The resulting marks are reminiscent of photograms, a cameraless photographic technique developed by early photographers but often associated with experimental 20th century photography. The works were made over the summer of 2016 and mark the time between the artist’s nomination for the Turner Prize and the opening of this exhibition.
The New Media Express in a Temporary Siding (Baby Wants To Ride) is a scale model of a Class 66 diesel locomotive and carriages in DB Schenker livery. The carriages are tagged by graffiti artists from the cities in which the train has previously been exhibited. For its presentation here at Tate Britain, the train, as the adapted title of the piece suggests, is temporarily static, elevated on a platform and awaiting its next move.
Pryde’s ongoing series of photographs, Hands “Für Mich”, resemble fashion or advertising images. They are closely cropped and focus on the models’ upper body and hands, which are touching objects such as phones, computer tablets, driftwood and notebooks. Our attention is drawn to the point at which the body and the object meet and to the gestures the hands perform.
Josephine Pryde was born in 1967 in Alnwick, Northumberland. She lives and works in London and Berlin.