Latitude Contemporary Art Award and Exhibition, Suffolk UK
14 – 17 July 2011


Maslen & Mehra - Common Ground 3 m x 2.5 m image and mirrored sculptures

Latitude 2011 announced commissions from five visual artists who have been shortlisted for the Latitude Contemporary Art Exhibition prize. Graham Dolphin, Delaine Le Bas, Alice Anderson, Maslen & Mehra and Andy Harper will all create new work
to be installed within the woods of the festival's Suffolk site.

The LCA selectors comprises the creator of Latitude and Managing Director of Festival Republic Melvin Benn; Independent Arts Writer Louise Gray; Artes Mundi Chief Executive and Curator (previously curator at Tate Modern) Ben Borthwick; Curator/Deputy Editor of The Wire Anne Hilde Neset; and Managing Director of Lavish Ami Jade Cadillac

Common Ground

Maslen & Mehra continue their experimental work with medium format photography in their series, Common Ground. Figures from different historical periods and cultures are juxtaposed in compositions, which have been painstakingly created using hand-made mirrored sculptures and drawing. Temporary interventions are created with mirrored figures, which are set up in a collection of landscapes and captured on film. Hand drawn pencil borders are then layered onto the compositions integrating roman references and drawings of contemporary tatoos.

Ghost-like figures appear like spectres from the past, only visible through the light reflected on their mirrored surfaces. In this work, Maslen & Mehra juxtapose two figures that in reality potentially have a 2000 year gap between them. Yet in this imagery and in the woods they are placed on the same ground. Just as the mirrored sculptures are temporary interventions …Cultures/ people no matter how powerful are transient….we are all just passing through.

‘Maslen and Mehras’ situationist photographs affirm the fragile ephemerality of our relation to nature’s energies. The impermanence, and temporary nature of these set-ups challenge us with living and sensitive metaphors for the nature culture gap, personified in photos about life on earth. ’ John K Grande