Alistair Prentice: Imperfect Focus
Exhibition Opening Event: Saturday 5th September | 2pm
Millennium Court is delighted to present Imperfect Focus, an exhibition by Portadown based lens based artist Alistair Prentice.
For over twenty years, Alistair has explored the relationship between people and the environments they inhabit, with a particular interest in the “subcultures of the street”. His photographic practice documents urban and rural life through intimate portraits and observations of the people and places he encounters.
Imperfect Focus brings together Alistair’s interest in street photography with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, which embraces transience, imperfection and incompleteness. The exhibition explores the beauty that can be found in moments that are imperfect, fleeting and unpredictable.
Working predominantly with film, Alistair has chosen to return to the simplicity of analogue photography through the use of pinhole box cameras and a Holga, a simple camera with a plastic lens. These lo fi approaches strip photography back to its most basic elements, creating images that are softer, more abstract and less controlled than those produced by contemporary digital technology.
The long exposures required by pinhole photography are central to the work. On bright days, exposures can take several seconds, while the cloudy conditions familiar to Northern Ireland can require several minutes. Movement during these exposures becomes part of the image, creating a dreamlike and ethereal quality.
Through Imperfect Focus, Alistair invites us to reconsider our ideas of photographic perfection. In contrast to the increasing precision of digital and AI driven image making, the exhibition celebrates uncertainty, simplicity and imperfection, reminding us that some of the most compelling images are those that leave room for chance, movement and imagination.
This exhibition will be on display until Saturday 17th October
