Citywide photographic exhibition featuring St Pauls Adventure Playground to launch
Posted on: 26 Aug 2020The exhibition is a collaboration between the Playground and Bristol based artist Esther May Campbell.
For the past year, children who play at local community hub St Pauls Adventure Playground have been taking pictures and creating artwork as part of a photo-club with Bristol based artist Esther May Campbell.
Next month, the work produced by the club will be exhibited on poster boards across Bristol, as well at the Playground itself, in an 'enlightening and inspiring' immersive exhibition.
The exhibition, titled SCRAPBOOK, arrives complete with a co-authored photo-book of the same name.
The on-site show at the Playground starts on Friday 4 September and runs until 6 September, and images will continue to be seen throughout the city throughout September.
The large-scale black and white images aim to bring scenes of play and joy back to Bristol's streets.
Capturing the risks and joys of throwing oneself into play, discovery and imagination, SCRAPBOOK has been constructed in part by Esther May Campbell.
Campell lives in Easton and works with photography and film.
In 2008, she received a BAFTA for Best Short Film for her film September. And in 2010, Campbell directed Channel 4's Skins.
In the weekly analogue photo-club with Campell, children explored how “play-spirit, craft and heaps of improvisation can evolve into an inspiration for living.”
“They took cameras apart, collaged, photographed and thought and played like artists.”
The photo-club took place against the backdrop of significant change; for the Playground, for Bristol, and for the world.
In April, an arson attack caused extensive damage the facility's outdoor play equipment and the site's London Plane tree. You can donate to the rebuild effort here.
“Over the autumn the children and I made photos, jumped through the air and fooled around with analogue cameras," Campbell explains.
“Our first photo-club session coincided with Strike for Climate Justice (led by school children). Winter arrived and, losing the light, we took a break. Brexit became official.
"In 2020 the club returned and we continued our photo experiments until the Corona virus took hold and ‘Ventures’ was shut.
“Over the months of lockdown there was an arson attack on the playground, Black Lives Matter brought people into the centre and the statue of Edward Colston came down.
“During these times we made the book and curated the exhibition.”
Speaking of the book, Rob Hopkins, writer and founder of the Transition Movement, said:
"I love this book. It captures exquisitely why play matters, and why imagination matters in 2020.
"And even better, it gives the camera to the kids to allow them to capture it, to show the bits they love, the aspects they treasure.
"This book is as much a treat for the reader's imagination as the St Pauls Adventure Playground is for the imagination of the kids who attend it."
Visit the on-site show at St Pauls Adventure Playground from Friday 4 September from 15:00 to 19:00, on Saturday 5 September from 13:00 to 19:00, and on Sunday 6 September from 13:00 to 17:00.
The exhibition photo-book can be bought at apeproject.co.uk/scrapbook.
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