Aspirations

OCA’s Les Monaghan asked;

How does your upbringing affect your chances in life?

How important are family, education, environment, location, culture, media, society and other factors in helping or hindering the prospects of young people today?

How have these values increased and diminished over time?

When faced with the portrait of another person what can we glean from the image they have projected, filtered as it always is, by the choices of the artist?

The Aspirations project engages with these questions through a body of photographic work created during 2014 in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Over six hundred portraits were made. Sitting next to the young person in each portrait is a parent or carer, a representative of family or a friend who is helping share their future.

The artist asked each young person, ‘what would you like to be when you are older?’ He then asked the older subject what they wanted to be when they were the young person’s age. The venues are formative spaces such as schools, clubs and sports halls. The aim is to create a contemporary history of Doncaster through the hopes of its residents, both past and future.

Check out Les’ blog for more information.

Join him on the 11 February in Stockport to examine the work, Les will talk to you about exhibiting, bidding for Creative People and Places grants, working to commission, as well as ideas of identity and place, and especially representation.

To reserve your place please email enquiries@oca.ac.uk or alternatively to request a place on a study visit please click here and complete the form.

Originally published at WeAreOCA.