Thursday 4th December 6.30 – 9pm @ 75 Broadway Market, London Fields, E8 4PH
SPBH Editions and Donlon Books are excited to invite you to the book launch of Close Your Eyes by Gareth McConnell.
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THE BOOK
Close Your Eyes is a frenzied reworking of the accumulated archive of photographer Gareth McConnell. An onslaught of kaleidoscopic imagery fuses portraits he took of rave-goers in Ibiza with pictures he both shot and found of a number of key moments in recent British history, from the 1985 Battle of the Beanfield to the London Riots of 2011. Amongst this we find collected references to the Zen mystic Osho, whose people are said to have experimented with Ecstasy and taken it into clubs for the first time.
This is a personal, political body of work–a frustrated meditation on the nature of human occurrence, the power of mass communion in it’s many forms, and the delirious experience of losing oneself to hedonism from the view of someone who saw it from within. As an object, the book is an immersive experience, galvanized with the same primal energy of the rave, it’s rapture and it’s ecstasy. Rythmn, Pulse, Rave, Repeat.
Gareth McConnell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. He studied Photography at the Royal College of Art and has exhibited his work widely across Europe and beyond. Gareth lives and works in London.
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SPBH EDITIONS
SPBH Editions is a London-based contemporary photography publishing house that challenges the traditional boundaries of bookmaking to realise exceptional artist projects in the form of limited edition publications.
SPBH Editions evolved from the curatorial project Self Publish, Be Happy and from that community and experience comes the ongoing pursuit of the book as an artwork.
SPBH Editions has most recently published books by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Cristina De Middel, Mariah Robertson and Lorenzo Vitturi, and established series such as SPBH Book Club, SPBN and SPBH Pamphlets.
www.spbheditions.com