GBS Fine Art will be showing on stand G18 in the central Pavilion at Somerset House, WC2R 1LA. Our presentation at PhotoLondon 2024 will focus on the work of four artists, each with a distinctive yet equally referential and resonant approach to the medium.

Susannah Baker-Smith’s practice has always thrived off dialogue and cultural immersion, whether it is a visual “conversation” with her peers, both contemporary and long gone or images captured during her extensive travels across Asia and the Middle East. Even in the more intimate setting of a studio, she brings a poetic sensitivity and compassion to her work. 

We will be showing two films by Jeffrey Blondes -- both made in Scotland.  Originally a landscape painter with many solo exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic and  rigorous in only painting en plein air, Blondes’ last 18 years have been devoted solely to making high definition films, ranging in length from 9 to 104 hours, usually filmed across a calendar year either weekly or seasonally.  The preoccupation of these films is the point at which landscape and time meet, and, as with his painting, Blondes is there to watch, wait and record the subtleties of nature and light at play in any given landscape. They will be presented on bespoke framed signage monitors. He will be the featured artist in the latest iteration of PhotoLondon’s magazine, to be published on May 10th. It may be viewed HERE.

The work of Martin Prothero and Richard John Seymour both find inspiration from old master painting, most specifically perhaps the Dutch Golden Age. Prothero’s 2023 Chiaroscuro series is clearly an hommage to their great still-life painters such as Pieter Claesz; using a technique he has termed “slow light photography” of long exposure whilst bathing the subject with a hand-held light source, they are then pigment printed onto a photorag with rich colour set against a deep and dense black background. 

Seymour is a photographer and film-maker.  His film Consumed was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Short Film in 2017.  His work has been published in many of the most prestigious international magazine titles and is primarily concerned with documenting “the anomalous architectures, curious urbanism and altered landscapes of our rapidly changing world.”  44°27’03.1”N 26°02’12.6”E III (2017-9) from his Coordinated Landscapes series does just this - a view of small groups ice fishing on the frozen, man-made reservoir Lacul Morii in Romania, again clearly referencing painters such as van Goyen or Avercamp.