Entry Title: " Offset"
Name: Nikolai Ishchuk, United Kingdom
Category: Non-Professional, Family


Entry Description: Closeness is a display as much as an affect. For a couple or family, to show closeness is to present a narrative of happiness to the world. The photo album is the ultimate record of this performance, which is then made legible to others. But there is always a possibility that the album is a cover-up for what is really managed distance and, at best, peripheral interaction. These pictures look like ordinary shots at first glance. On closer inspection it becomes clear that the language of family photographs is being disrupted and a previously invisible space opens itself for enquiry.

My practice can be described as being primarily photography-based, but it has been expanding through inclusion of other elements, such as collage and drawing, as well as by borrowing from the language of sculpture and painting. It traverses the resulting border territories and their generative potential for hybrid form, questioning photography’s material condition. In my previous projects, I have explored ideas of connection to a place and the abstract nature of money. I have recently been selected by Whitechapel Gallery among London's 35 most dynamic artists. I am currently a student on the Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art course at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. Recent exhibitions include The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2012; Big Bangs, Big Bucks, Diemar/Noble, London, 2010; Workshop 20’11, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2011; Salt, 2nd International Moscow Biennale of Young Art, 2010 and Landscape…, RuArts Gallery, Moscow, 2009. EDUCATION - PG Dip in Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2012) - Graduate Certificate in Digital Lens Based Image Making, London College of Communication (2007) - M.Phil. in Modern Society and Global Transformations, University of Cambridge (2005) - BA (Hons) in Economics and Sociology, with First class honors, University of York (2004) - Attended secondary school in Moscow and Boston (USA)