mc2gallery is proud to host the exhibition of British photographer Jonny Briggs (London, 1985). Jonny Briggs, photographer and conceptual artist, retraces his past with his work, through which he gives us a clear image of the difficult relationship experienced with the family in the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Passionate about sculpture-objects, Jonny elevates them to the main protagonists of his work and through them he tells us his story: childhood in the Berkshire woods, family with its burden of affections, apprehensions, conflicts, an authoritarian father, the tolerant mother, four older sisters to safeguard little Jonny who however cannot imitate them; all reinterpreted through some overshooting or subtle perversities in the Gothic Novel style. A true personal diary of images which, through continuous self-analysis, leads the viewer on an engaging, sometimes uncanny journey, which brings the dimension of reality closer to that of the unreal. It is clear, from the very first glance, how the large format makes his compositions stand out to the fullest, created with an almost maniacal precision.
However, in these autobiographical sets there is always something out of place or that disturbs these so rigorous visions, transforming the image into a theater of anxieties, emotional tensions and discomforts caused by the suffocating environment of the British middle class. We therefore witness figurative self-analysis, focused on the relationship with the members of one’s family and with the world around him. What stands out is the ability to bring back feelings that have by now been metabolised, re-proposed and filtered through the taste for fiction, which seems to conceal the artist’s autobiographical story within a dreamlike vision that foreshadows the testimony of an existence which, basically , is close to the past of each of us. Jonny Briggs, trained at the Royal College of Art, is an award-winning artist, a member of the Saatchi stable, included in the prestigious Catlin Guide and considered among the promising talents in post-Damien Hirst England.
