Ballade: Michelle Sank

Ballade, Michelle Sank

Ballade

Michelle Sank

15 June to 22 July

93 St George's Road, Brighton, BN2 1NB

 

 

Koop Projects is delighted to present the internationally renowned photographer, Michelle Sank's new series - Ballade - for the first time in the UK.

 

Michelle Sank was born in South Africa and settled in the UK in 1987. She cites this background as informing her interest in sub-cultures and the exploration of contemporary social issues and challenges. Her crafted portraits meld place and person creating sociological, visual and psychological landscapes and narratives.

Growing up during Apartheid in an immigrant community, Sank has empathy with the experience of a community from the peripheries. Praised by her mentor David Goldblatt for finding the sensational in the everyday, her gaze is highly inquisitive and non-judgemental seeking to empower her subjects through their experience of the sitting process.  

 

For this series, the artist travelled back to the Sea Point Promenade, a formative place in her early years and as a student of photography. She recalls tableaus that transpired through play, encounters and festivities. The pool, the walkway, the beaches and the green areas all serving as stage sets within which diverse performances unfolded. Returning there in 2022, she intuitively responds to the unfolding of scenes that emerge within time and space. Of Ballade, Michelle says: "This series is a celebration of the wonderment of the landscape and the cultural diversity within, that is so much part of own heritage and persona."

In the afterword to her book "Becoming", the photographer David Goldblatt, wrote of Sank's ability to capture the essence of her subjects: "They seem, completely, themselves; Sank has allowed each of them simply to be. Yet it is not a passive state, something has been evoked that seems to come from deep within. Does it come from her interaction with the subject, or ‘simply’ from a kind of hyper-awareness of what is there "

 
Her photographs have been exhibited and published extensively in the UK, Europe, Australia and Mexico, South Africa and the U.S.A. Her imagery is held in the permanent collections of Allan Servais, Brussells, Open Eye Gallery Archive, Liverpool, Societe Jersiaise and Guernsey Museum, Channel Islands, Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, RAMM, Exeter and The Museum of Youth Culture, UK.

She has undertaken continuous commissions and residencies for prominent galleries and museums in in Europe and the USA and her work has won awards in numerous prestigious competitions including the Taylor Wessing Prize and the British Journal of Photography. She was recently a winner in The Portrait of Britain 2020, The Photo Review international competition, and is a recipient of the Rapid Response Fund, The Contemporary Arts Society for purchase of work from the series “Breathe” that she made during Covid for exhibition at The Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter. She has recently been awarded a Fellowship with Distinction from The Royal Photographic Society. Sank has four published books, The Water's Edge: Women on the Waterfront (Published by Liverpool University Press) - a study of women who worked and still work on Liverpool's Docks, Becoming: (Published by Belfast Exposed Photography and Ffotogallery,) - a major monograph featuring her youth portraits taken over five years accompanied by an essay by David Goldblatt,The Submerged: about the landscape and inhabitants of Aberystwyth, Wales accompanied by an essay by Liz Wells (Published by Schilt Publishing) and My.Self: about the cultural
identity amongst diverse young people in the Black Country – UK (Published by Multistory)

 

Michelle Sank is represented by Elliott Gallery in Amsterdam, Netherlands: www.elliott.gallery

 

 

 

Enquiries:

Helen Rogers

helen@koopprojects.com

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