British institution celebrated in exhibition

Britain's iconic Butlin's holiday camps have been captured in a unique way by a professor from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA).

Coinciding with Butlin's 75th anniversary, UCA Farnham's Professor of Photography, Anna Fox, is exhibiting her work at the James Hyman Gallery in London from 12 October until 12 November 2011.

Produced over a two year period, Resort is Professor Fox's newest series and was commissioned by Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, and supported by Butlin's and UCA.

Professor Fox, who lectures on the MFA Photography degree at UCA Farnham, said: "It is always incredibly exciting to get into new places to photograph and the Resort project naturally interested me as it extends my already large archive of documentary work about the South of England.

"The most interesting thing for me about the project was to be able to work with such incredible large scale equipment and lighting supported by a brilliant technical team, which included a number of UCA graduates. This process has revolutionised the whole character of my work and enabled me to produce incredibly high quality images at a large scale."

Specifically focusing on the Bognor Regis resort, she has created a group of large format, hyper-real contemporary colour images which navigate the resort's geography of leisure in all its lurid allure.

Super-saturated colours and ambient flash create dramatic compositions of families spending time in the brightly coloured spaces of this celebrated British institution.

Valérie Whitacre, from the James Hyman Gallery, said: "We are very excited to show Anna Fox's latest solo exhibition.

"Anna often chooses to include elements of the mundane in her pictures to hint at the pleasurable absurdity of life in a theme park where fences, air conditioning vents and bins feature as frequently as holidaying subjects.

"Visitors are lit up by an array of light – both natural and artificial, from video games, beauty-spa mirrors, mood-lit bars and fruit machines."

The series consists of two parts, the first focusing on wholesome family holidays, the second on the new wave adult breaks.

Anna Fox has been an influential force in photography and video for over 20 years.

Influenced by the British documentary tradition and US 'New Colourists' her first series Workstations, (Camerawork, London 1988) documented and satirised London office culture in the mid-Thatcher years.

Her photographs of week-end paint-balling, Friendly Fire, were exhibited at The Victoria & Albert Museum, the Netherlands Foto Institute and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Fox has had solo exhibitions at The Photographers' Gallery, London and The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago as well as a touring exhibition of her work Cockroach Diary and Other Stories and a major solo show in Krakow, Poland in 2010.

For more information contact:

Valérie C. Whitacre, James Hyman Gallery
T: 020 7494 3857
E: valerie@jameshymanphotography.com

Twitter: @JHymanPhoto

David Reilly, Press Officer, UCA
T: 01252 892939
E: dreilly@ucreative.ac.uk

Twitter: @UCA_creative