Janet Mendelsohn/Dinh Q.Le/Kelly Mark

Janet Mendelsohn: Varna Road

Part of a ‘photo-essay’ Mendelsohn made as a student at the University of Birmingham during 1967–69, the photographs depict everyday life in the inner-city district of Balsall Heath, focusing in particular on a sex worker, referred to as Kathleen, with whom Mendelsohn formed a close relationship. By using photography as “a tool for cultural analysis”, she provides a unique insight into a transforming community, shaped by increasing immigration from the Caribbean and South Asia, and affected by ongoing poverty-related issues.

Dinh Q.Le: The Colony

In three parts, featuring newly filmed footage, The Colony is loosely based on nineteenth century depictions of a cluster of islands off the west coast of Peru, rich in guano, a powerful fertilizer. Exploring the drama of absurdity, greed and human suffering, all for the brown gold of bird excrement, Lê’s narratives touch on aspects of the islands’ history such as the nineteenth century imperial wars between Spain and its former colonies Peru and Chile, and the US Guano Act of 1856 that authorised over one hundred claims for uninhabited islands, reefs and atolls in the Pacific and Atlantic.

Kelly Mark: 108 Leyton Avenue

108 Leyton Ave (2014), a new film by Canadian artist Kelly Mark is her most personally revealing work to date. Built from common expressions relating to “everything” and “nothing”, it was developed over a period when Mark was living in the social isolation of a quasi-suburban limbo on Toronto’s eastern edge. “Everything” and “nothing” are constructed as opposite but asymmetrical roles performed by the artist for a split-screen projection, plumbing the contradictions of her own personality to reveal the bravura and insecurity of having no one to talk to but yourself.

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