Eva Roth

I work with space, time and memory. I investigate how environments and epigenetic inheritance influence emotional states.

There is a strong link to architecture and the built environment in my work. In order to define ‘home’, ‘belonging’ and 'identity' I work with images that trigger both familiarity and alienation - past homes, abandoned homes, traces of human living, transformed environments.

Several of my projects are linked to a deserted disaster zone in Sicily.

I went to art college as a young woman, but for personal reasons I did not pursue a career as a fine artist. With degrees in both fine art and graphic design, I spent decades working as a packaging designer and retoucher. During that time photography changed from being analog to digital, and photoshop came into being.

In 2018 I underwent major surgery to remove a tumour from my pancreas. Recovery took a long time and was superseded by Covid lockdown. I re-assessed my life and decided to devote myself to the development of my career as a fine artist with photography as my chosen medium.

I feel that the perception of visual information is changing. Photography in its digital and virtual form has become an omnipresent part of everyday life.

Technology is on the verge of producing perfectly crafted visual statements on highly sophisticated devices without any personal input whatsoever, using photography in a pre-defined and deceptively artistic way. A new visual language, similar to the abbreviated texting lingo, seems to be developing, greatly helped by AI’s algorithms.

I am force-fed an overpowering amount of artificially created visual statements covering every aspect of human nature. I am told what to see and even what I am supposed to feel.

I want to reclaim photography as an artistic tool, looking at how, as an artist, I can bypass the focus on fast, predictable results and global accessibility.

I search for what isn't obviously visible and what can’t be described in a word or two. Rather than finding the one clearly defined solution, I aim to encompass all the blurriness and blending of layers, the in- and out-of-focus, the darkness and shadows and light that my eyes are exposed to when I look at something in real life.

I am partly going back to what I was taught as a young person at art college, when chance occurrences and personal input (which might not make sense to anyone else) were valued for their ability to give a voice to unspoken elements; where images were at liberty to go wherever they were destined to go and where expressionism was as valid as impressionism.

I want to enable the eyes, brain, soul and personal memories to co-operate and generate images that allow for dialogues between visible and invisible elements.

They can be of both personal and collective nature.

SELECTED SHOWS AND RESIDENCIES

2024 Sight Unseen (Group Show) The Glasgow Gallery of Photography

2024 Les Rencontres d’Arles - stages: Antoine d’Agata - An intimate diary: at the limits of the photographic act.
At this workshop I intensified my work on the subject of 'Seismic Shift' by looking at how I can get closer to my theme by incorporating images beyond the built environment, incorporating subjects such as nature and the human body.

2023 Hong Kong International Photo Festival - group show
In 2023 I was selected for the Hong Kong workshop ‘Exploring Processes of Photobook Making with Yumi Goto’.
I developed the prototype of for a photobook, which I finalised back in London.

My photobook 'Seismic Shift' is an attempt to make emotional sense of disasters, when powerful forces suddenly take away everything that is familiar and change the world to something inexplicable and undefinable. My language is purely visual. There is a text part explaining about the project, but it should really be read after having first let the images and their arrangement speak for themselves.

2023 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
2023 Members' Summer Show | Chelsea Arts Club | London
2023 Small File Photo Ferstival Shortlisted | Photographers' Gallery
2022 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
2021 ING Discerning Eye | Mall Galleries, London
2021 Figurative Art Now | Mall Galleries, London (online due to covid)
2021 Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, longlisted
2020 ING Discerning Eye | London (online due to covid)
2019 Summer Show | LondonPrintStudio | London
2019 Members’ Summer Show | Chelsea Arts Club | London
2018 Stewarts Law | RCA Secret, Royal College of Art | London
2018 Summer Show | LondonPrintStudio | London
2017 Summer Salon | Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes | London
2017 Summer Show | LondonPrintStudio | London
2017 Milchhof Studio | Berlin (residency)
2016 Summer Salon | Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes | London
2016 Sixty | Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes | London
2015 Cill Rialaig Arts Centre | Ballinskelligs | Ireland
2015 The Cill Rialaig Project | Ballinskelligs | Ireland (residency)

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