Photographs taken with a huge Victorian camera go on exhibition at Nuneaton Library before coming to Compton Verney in October

Image: Jo Gane working with the camera at Nuneaton Library, May 2023. Photo by Ruby Nixon.

Blue is the colour of memory, a new exhibition by artist Jo Gane, opens on 31 July 2023 at Nuneaton Library and will move to Compton Verney as part of the Coventry Biennial in October.

The new exhibition is the culmination of a piece work that started with a 130 year-old camera found in the basement of the Hinckley Times building. Once Jo Gane restored the enormous Victorian camera, portraits were taken of members of the public who live around the area using a chemical photographic process from the 1850s called wet plate collodion. The resultant 15 inch glass plates were then printed onto fabric banners for the exhibition using the Victorian blueprint process, cyanotype.

These incredible historic processes used to make portraits of contemporary residents have been used to articulate their stories and describe why they are attached to the place in which they live.

The artist says: ‘The camera’s scale and its age really brings people in to talk about their histories. When working on the street outside the Library making portraits, people were drawn towards it to tell me their histories of places in the local area. That quickly became the theme of the exhibition.’

The portraits and exhibition will move to Compton Verney in October as part of the Coventry Biennale: like a shortcut through brambles.

Find out more about the exhibition below and sign up to our mailing list here to hear about new exhibitions and events coming to Compton Verney.