Going in Circles - Michaela Davidova

Private View: 12 June 6-9 pm
Exhibition runs: 12th-16th
June 11-7 pm Pinhole Camera Not a Bomb - 1 day workshop https://www.facebook.com/events/200851306260967
"We often associate the movement of going in a circle with something negative. Are we lost, not able to move forward or grow up? The circles are present in our every day life. Life is a circle even sustainability principles are based on a circular economy. Going in a loop also means finishing something and continuing where we once started. Circles demonstrate a positive change, proving we have learned something during the route. Have we?"
Going in Circles is a solo exhibition of the artist and recent graduate from Cardiff School of Art and Design, Michaela Davidova. The exhibition presents a series of projects with a focus on pinhole photography and upcycling.

Michaela's journey started when she moved to the United Kingdom, in July 2013. The first stop was London, where she experienced many jobs in hospitality and worked in the most peculiar antique shop in Teddington. As a creative person, she knew she must develop her passions. One afternoon, she decided to start something she always wanted to do but never had time for. It was the perfect opportunity to make her first pinhole camera from a matchbox. The optimal pinhole diameter, a tiny circular hole drilled into a thin sheet of aluminium became the Thing and that Summer afternoon still continues.

In 2015, she established her practice as a craftivist and a pinhole photography artist in Cable Street Studios. Michaela is a passionate traveller and a dreamer. She regularly cycles long distance trips across Europe with her photographic equipment packed in a trailer attached to her bicycle. A lot of her work is done on the road. In 2016, she moved to Cardiff to study on the Artist: Designer Maker course at Cardiff School of Art and Design. There, she gained a deeper knowledge of different materials and processes and joined the exchange study program at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Besides pinhole photography, she is interested in researching other alternative photography techniques. Her work is influenced by sustainability and upcycling, media archaeology and new materialism, psychogeography and craftivism. Although, Michaela's practice is mainly grounded in visual arts, the concept is more important than the content of the image. Her artworks often question shared responsibility, waste society and our relationship to the environment. She is intrigued by the thingness of the photographic matter and its memory. As a pinhole photographer and craftivist she tackles environmental concerns with the light-sensitive properties of photographic paper and with creative engagements in the public realm.
Soon, Michaela will be moving out of the country and so she is coming back to London to share what happened since the times when everything began.