Street Level Photoworks presents two exhibitions of work, during the month of February, by Steffi Klenz, one at Street Level Photoworks and the other at the Goethe Institut in Glasgow.
Her series, 'La Posa', will be showing at Goethe Institut until February 26th. This series explores the idea of the house as an architectural and visual metaphor, comprising the idea of home as a point of origin and return. Located in the village of Tyneham in South-West England, which was repossessed by the army and deemed essential for the war effort in 1943, the intellectual roots of the photographic series are within the tradition of ephemeral buildings. The photographic images create a space that disturbs the familiar space of the home and raises the question: If the house has been turned inside out, how can one ever go home?
Her series,'Nummianus', will be showing at Street Level Photoworks until March 28th. The photographic series “Nummianus” critically explores ideas of displacement and the collapse of a sense of rootedness regarding the notion of place. The sequential photographs show boarded up, terraced houses in the Greater Manchester area. Some residents, unable to sell their homes, are forced to remain in the area where they have become subject to a downward spiral of social exclusion. Critically intended, the images comment on the former wealth, diversity and livelihood through the deliberate reference to the city of Pompeii. The title of the show is a direct reference to an inscription found in the remains of a house in that city, and literally translated means coin or money. Through this, Klenz makes an ironic reference to homes as commodities and creates a memorial to the loss of communities.
