Hannah Starkey

Exhibition of the work of photographer Hanna Starkey, curated by Liam Kelly.Since 1997, Hannah Starkey has produced a series of photographic meditations on contemporary life. Her early works were staged scenarios based on the experiences of young women living in the city. They were meticulously constructed and often cinematic, suggesting a narrative that had been artificially suspended in time. Her later works, both technically and compositionally more advanced, set up a tension between the real and the imaginary and draw attention to the banality and dehumanizing effects of the constructed environments in which we lead so much of our lives. In recent years her close observation of the urban landscape has produced a series of images in which surfaces – a wall, an air-conditioning duct, a runway – become relevant subjects in themselves. Starkey’s understanding of the passage contemporary photography has made in the past decade continues to fuel and to challenge the development of her own imagery, making her one of the most influential and exceptional photographic artists working today.Hannah Starkey was born in Belfast in 1971. She studied Photography and Film at Napier University, Edinburgh, followed by an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1997. Since then her work has been shown internationally, including at the Saatchi Gallery, London (1998), the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam (1999), Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2000), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2000), Tate Liverpool (2001), New Art Gallery, Walsall (2002), Bard College, New York (2003), Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig (2005), the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2006), and the Mead Gallery, Coventry (2011). She has been represented by Maureen Paley, London since 1997. A monograph on the artist’s work, Hannah Starkey, was published by Mead Gallery in 2011 and Photographs 1997-2007, was published by Steidl in 2008. She has been included in Vitamin Ph published by Phaidon in 2007 and in Art Photography Now published by Thames & Hudson in 2005. Her work is included in public collections at Tate and Victoria & Albert Museum in London as well as the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and Castello di Rivoli in Turin.This is the first major exhibition of her work in her native city.