ARTISTS TALKING

I often explore and express very personal, sometimes global, issues that affect me on a day-to-day basis. I feel that it is important to have complete freedom when producing work, free from external expectations and notions of right and wrong. The camera is a tool and ally in the whole process of image making.

Recent work includes Celebration of Death which explores different cultural attitudes to death and how this is portrayed through the burial sites. Whilst graves are places associated with loss and sadness, I have often observed them as possessing great beauty; this, I feel lies in the deceased family's response to the death and life of a loved one and their own celebration of that person's existence. It is through my images that I seek to honour these celebrations.

Research for Celebration of Death has taken me to Senegal, Mexico, France and England. Whilst in Dakar I completed another body of work titled Taxi. This was a running documentation of street sellers, from the perspective of a detached observer using taxi journeys for 'drive-by shootings'. For me, a lot of the items for sale seemed out of context (for example white, blonde-haired dolls) for the country and its people: I found the many contrasts and conflicts depressing, but visually stimulating.

For my latest body of work titled Bird Box, I explore, through the male gaze, the desire to watch other human beings. I consider how desire – predominantly male – manifests itself through the lure of violent films and how these films stimulate/excite men in a similar manner as sexual images. Thirty boxes will be covered in red velvet and mounted on walls, below eye level, forcing the viewer to bend over and take a vulnerable pose in order to become the voyeur – engaging in some of the experience and feelings of a peeping tom.

I am also an independent curator, and through this aspect of my practice I have had the opportunity to work with many talented Black contemporary artists: Johannes Phokela, Godfried Donkor, Michelle Vacciana, David Brouet, Elshaday Berhaine, Nicholas Cornwall, Holston Scott, Rachel Burke, Donovan Pennant and Andrew Wright.

Up and coming shows include Elshaday Berhaine, Godfried Donkor and Johannes Phokela at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham in January 2002, and again Godfried Donkor and Johannes Phokela at the City Gallery, Leicester in March 2002. I am also involved in planning a festival dedicated to photography and lens-based work in Nottingham in 2003.

Michael Forbes and [a-n] MAGAZINE.
One of twelve collaborations promoting artists' networking and new approaches to contemporary practice.