Art of Arrangement: Photography and the Still Life Tradition is a visually arresting exhibition at Bath’s Holburne Museum. Organised in partnership with the National Media Museum and featuring photographs from the Collection of The Royal Photographic Society it surveys the many ways in which photographers have explored still life.

Still life has captured the imagination of photographers from the early 19th century to the present day. When early photographers adopted the still life genre, they inherited a rich visual tradition, found in centuries of painting. It is a tradition full of lavish, exotic and sometimes dark arrangements, full of symbolic depth and meaning.

Historically, painters used the rich decorative possibilities of still life to demonstrate their technical skill and to create a feast for the senses. Photographers, throughout the history of the medium, have extended the possibilities of the still life genre and tradition. They have not only used the subject as a vehicle for creative expression, but for documentary and scientific enquiry, and for the development of inventories and catalogues.

This exhibition builds on the rich tradition, symbolic nature and history of still life. It considers the formal and aesthetic conventions photographers have used, and how they have been adapted and subverted to invest new meaning in the photograph.

Art of Arrangement: Photography and the Still Life Tradition includes photographs by Ansel Adams, Harold Edgerton, Roger Fenton, Edward Steichen, William Henry Fox Talbot and Madame Yevonde, as well as contemporary photographers such as Chris Killip and Don McCullin.

Exhibition Talks

Friday 17 February, 7.30pm
Ticket £10/£8 concs
Lucy Soutter: Tradition and Transformation in Contemporary Still Life Photography

In this evening event associated with Art of Arrangement, photographer, critic and art historian Lucy Soutter, from the Royal College of Art, will discuss the persistence and dynamic transformation of photographic still life. Using examples from the exhibition as well as from very recent work, Soutter will explore some of the different possibilities for still life in contemporary practice.

Monday 19 March, 3.30pm
Ticket £5
Pam Roberts: Roger Fenton (1819-1869) and the Still Life Tradition

Pam Roberts explores the work of photographer Roger Fenton. Despite the cumbersome nature of mid/late 19th century photographic technology, the still life genre was used as both a traditional and experimental form during this period, especially so by Roger Fenton. Fenton practised every aspect of photography during his ten-year career and only fully turned his attention to still life in 1860 producing large format still life prints that emphatically stated his artistic credentials.

Monday 16 April, 3.30pm
Ticket £5
Alexander Sturgis: Photography and Painting

From its invention photography has both responded to and influenced the painter’s practice. In this talk the Museum’s Director, Alexander Sturgis, considers the fascinating dialogue between painting and photography over the last century and a half as exemplified in many of the photographs in the exhibition Art of Arrangement.

Art of Arrangement: Photography and the Still Life Tradition
11 February to 7 May 2012
Admission £6.50 / Concessions

The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath BA2 4DB
Open daily, 10am to 5pm (11am to 5pm Sundays and Bank Holidays)
Tel: 01225 388569 email: holburne@bath.ac.uk   www.holburne.org