Evening of photographic conversation with visual artist Olufemi Olaiya about his work 'Odyssey of Memory', with a talk by photographer ThaĆÆs Verhasselt.
Olufemi Olaiya is coming to Aspex on Thursday 22 October for a photographic talk, and he's bringing another local photographer along for the ride. The evening is presented by Pompey Darkroom, a Community Interest Company whose proceeds the tickets support, with backing from Portsmouth Creates, Arts Council England and Portsmouth City Council. Aspex itself is a visual arts and educational charity right by the waterfront in Gunwharf Quays, with a shop and an independent cafe inside and free entry on a donation basis.
Olaiya is a self-taught visual artist specialising in portrait, fashion and architectural photography. His work looks at storytelling, historical context and the connections between people and generations, and the talk draws on his latest body of work, Odyssey of Memory, which tackles family, archive and memory. It's the kind of thing that works better when you hear the artist talk through it than when you just look at the images on a wall.
There's a second act to the night too. The evening introduces Turning the Tide, a new series of short talks by local photographers, and the first one is Fare to Remember by photographer ThaĆÆs Verhasselt. It's an artist book of 50 photographs and stories from her time as a bus driver, so it's a very different kind of gaze from Olaiya'sāone coming from someone who's spent her days on the city's roads rather than in a studio. Between the two, you'll get a good sense of how different photographers in the city are working with memory and archive.
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It runs from 6pm to 8pm on Thursday 22 October at Aspex Portsmouth, PO1 3BF. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, with Ā£1, Ā£3 and Ā£5 as the options, and the money goes to Pompey Darkroom.
