What happens when we view the world from a different angle? What can we learn by stepping outside of our own perspective, and into someone else’s shoes? These five exhibitions encourage audiences to do just that. The shows consider how traditions of photography have built and perpetuated narratives that exclude and erase queer people of colour; reveal how social, religious and political belief systems shape the very fabric of our towns and cities; and consider how diasporic communities use language to connect with places they no longer inhabit. Elsewhere, Jeff Wall reckons with the major concerns of contemporary life, using large-scale, still lifes to draw attention to our most pressing problems. Similarly, Yannis Bournais addresses one huge aspect of the human condition: solitude. His work imagines the split second after an explosion, when every person must fend for themselves. They are not to be missed.
Turner prize-nominated artist Nathan Coley is best-known for work that interrogates public space and examines how systems of personal, social, religious and political belief shape our towns, cities and sense of self. Two of his most renowned installations are now on display at The Bowes Museum. You Create What You Will, a piece of illuminated text that hovers five-and-a-half-metres off the ground, invites viewers to question the profound power of creation. Meanwhile, Tate Modern on Fire, sees 2D flames emerge from a model of the London museum, reflecting the fragility of cultural institutions.
Jeff Wall is one of the most influential photographers working today. His large-scale photographs confront issues of war, gender, class and identity, blending documentary realism with cinematic poise. Wall is unafraid to reckon with major social and political issues like class, gender, nature, race and war, drawing on influences from literature, painting and Italian neo-realism to craft scenes that are both staged and startlingly real. This expansive survey traces his evolution from the 1970s to today, spotlighting photographs that are complex, enigmatic and deeply resonant with contemporary life.
Historian Edward Said coined the term “imaginative geographies,” in which a location is actively constructed through representation. In Phantasmatic Screens, Tiffany Sia presents two installations that prove Said’s ideas, considering how it is used by diasporic communities to relate to somewhere they no longer inhabit.The Sojourn projects moving-image works onto the undulating surface of a polyester curtain, transforming film into an immersive experience. Antipodes III uses a suspended rear-view mirror as a screen, symbolically merging visions of the past and present and challenging traditional modes of seeing.
Tommy Kha’s irreverent and poignant works ask: How do we see ourselves when we are not represented? Kha is a queer artist, raised in an immigrant family whose journey from China through Vietnam ultimately led to the American south. The photographer makes work borne out of these intersecting identities, critiquing how the medium has been used to construct and perpetuate narratives that exclude or misrepresent. Kha creates cardboard cutouts of himself, before placing them in unexpected locations. His head peers out from behind a woman’s ironing board, whilst his body stands upside down on a roadside.
Yannis Bournais’s new exhibition explores the forms of contemporary solitude. The exhibition unfolds as a photographic cycle that opens and closes with images of city in the aftermath of an explosion. The streets seem suspended in the wake of an unseen detonation, a place caught in the instant after impact. Objects hover midair: a crumpled cup, a falling card, a compact disc scattering reflected light. A Manual for Solitude brings to the surface the fissures of everyday life and the atmospheres of uncertainty that envelop them. In this show, to view is to participate, and every act of observation encounters a gaze that returns it.
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1&6. Evening at the pool”, 110cn x 165cm Fine Art Print, edition of 5.
2. Nathan Coley, You Create What You Will, 2025. © The Bowes Museum
3. Jeff Wall, The Drain , 1989 Transparency in lightbox 229.0 x 290 cm Courtesy of the artist
4. Tiffany Sia Antipodes III, 2024 Collection Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean Donation 2024 – Baloise Installation view, Art Basel Statements, 2024 Courtesy of the artist, FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna, and Maxwell Graham, New York Photo: Choreo © Mudam Luxembourg.
5. Tommy Kha, Constellations XXIV, Verplanck, New York, 2024. Archival pigment print. © Tommy Kha.
