X-TALK #28 BY DAVID GRANDORGE

X-Talk #28 by David Grandorge: A Visual Exploration of Hinterlands & Landscapes

On Monday January 30th, 2017 at 7pm
at Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture

The lecture will address the documentation of contemporary and historic city hinterland spaces and the optimistic notion of ‘Good City’ – spaces, just to the edge of centre, that demonstrate resilience to untrammelled, artless development. This will be juxtaposed with the photographic documentation of landscapes subjected to geo-political pressure and resource exploitation.

David Grandorge is a Senior lecturer in Architecture and Structure, Construction and Materials at London Metropolitan University where he has taught for twenty years. Veering between restless curiosity and a fundamental pragmatism he has led post graduate Unit 7 for the past twelve years, his students winning numerous awards and going on to be very successful practitioners. He is currently on sabbatical. He has also been a visting lecturer at ETH Zurich; the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge; Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen; and the Department of Architecture, University of Bath. He will be a visting professor at the University of Delft from March 2017.

Grandorge has pursued the photography of buildings, cities and landscapes since 1996. Over time, he has developed a body of work that is characterized by visual austerity and laconic expression. He is concerned with pictorial and compositional precision, but welcomes the intrusion of the imperfect, through the depiction of latent occupancy and the exploitation of technical mishaps. His work has been published and exhibited internationally, including the Prague Biennale of 2005, the Venice Architecture Biennales of 2008, 2012 and 2016 and in solo exhibitions at Rake in Trondheim (The World is Still Beautiful) and Peter Von Kant in London (Without Sun).

In the essay “Objectif”, Tom Emerson wrote: “The recurring composition is extremely precise which, remembering his mentors in Dusseldorf, can initially pass as objective – objectif is the French word for camera lens – and, if Grandorge’s images are monumental and still, they are also doomed, ghostly like he is recording the end of something; melancholic, more fearful than celebratory.”