AMBIT: Photographies from Scotland (Street Level Photoworks)

• David Pollock
• 28 May 2019

Iain Sarjeant

Diversity of technique and theme exhibited from five new artists at this two-part show

An exhibition in two parts, the other half of AMBIT can be seen at the Stills Gallery in Edinburgh, where works by six photographers are on display. Here, a range of five artists are showcasing their images, although Street Level seems somehow more spacious and able to accommodate larger samples of work from those involved. The show promises diversity of technique and theme from new artists, and in the works here, there is plenty to reflect on and enjoy.

From Highlands-based Iain Sarjeant, for example, comes a series built upon skilful documentary photography and a rich sense of bleak humour found in the mundane. He calls it 'Out of the Ordinary', a pedestrian but descriptive title for playful, everyday shots taken from Drumochter to Selkirk, showing pylons and service yards; a jumble of traffic cones before striking, snow-capped mountains; and a destroyed car abandoned on waste ground. It's akin to Martin Parr, but with landscapes over portraiture.

Katy Hundertmark, meanwhile, shows work with a particular sense of contrast, not just between the stark black and white of the images, but in different states of gravity, texture and aesthetic beauty; in one shot she has laid a clean white sheet over soil, in another her hand pulls a filthy, dark metal chain from the earth. In a triptych, she holds lumps of rough concrete and tree root while wearing a sheer black silk dress. Csilla Kozma's pieces also employ vivid contrast, using the Mordencage process to give her atmospheric still life and portrait pieces the air of an unsettling fantasy world.