Hiding in Plain Sight - an artist's perspective
Eden Arts developed a companion project to Face.Masks featuring local people – Hiding in Plain Sight. Inspired by the work of French photographer JR - who has a retrospective of his work coming to the Saatchi Gallery from mid November.
Hiding in Plain Sight sees Eden Arts commission yet another young Cumbrian artist Richie Johnson of Optical Vitamins.
Richie photographed local people who had been nominated by their community for doing things that showed that they cared. They were photographed masked. Again the point is that these are people who are so important in our communities yet are often almost unseen, hiding in plain sight. They are celebrated in large format peering out of 59 shop windows.
[Richie] "Working on the Hiding In Plain Sight project was really beneficial to my practice... I had never been given the chance to create prints on such a large scale before so this was an interesting learning curve. I also learnt a lot about the curation process, particularly as the images needed to match the ever changing surroundings of the town's streets.”
You can see Hiding in Plain Sight in Penrith Town Centre from 24th October.