Charlotte Colbert: A Day at Home, Gazelli Art House, London

Photographer and screenwriter Charlotte Colbert playfully examines the link between the imagined and the real in the context of the home in a new exhibition at Gazelli Art House, London. A Day at Home draws the figure of the writer and the housewife together as two individuals struggling to avoid being drawn into their setting and their imaginings respectively. Running 29 November until 15 December, the black and white images are shot on medium format film and are displayed within the context of their original negative, alluding to surreal fragments of a dream.

The photographs were captured on location in a derelict house in Bethnal Green. The surrounding ruins evolve into a character in themselves, representing an oppressive mind-set impossible to escape. The long and double exposure of her prints and the use of props and distorting mirrors transports viewers into a fictional narrative.

Colbert builds on narrative interests in her work in A Day at Home. The collection is a study of madness and the fragility of existence, reality and belonging. Her decision to use medium format film allows for the subject of her images to be overwhelmed and absorbed into the scenery. A couple of shots are taken in 35mm and delve into the relationship between self-perception and the character’s body. Layered with meaning and concerned with the difference between reality and fiction, Colbert’s work constructs a parallel universe in which to analyse the domestic space.

Charlotte Colbert: A Day at Home, 29 November – 15 December, Gazelli Art House, 39 Dover Street, London, W1.