Exhibition Review | Visual Art | Brian Rope
The Camera
Unrepair Shop | UK Frederick
Photo Access
| 14 August – 13 September 2025
Entering the gallery my first sight of The Camera Unrepair Shop caused me to wonder just what was being exhibited. Three shelves on the wall filled with an assortment of analogue cameras and a table with a few seemingly random pieces of photo paraphernalia on it. But, when I took a closer look and thought about it, I soon saw a simple photographic shop.
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| First Sight - The Camera Unrepair Shop Installation Image © Brian Rope |
Promotional material informs us that the exhibition combines installation, cyanotype process and performance to reflect on the nature of photography, its evolution, and the unseen labour behind film-based imagery. And that the artist, UK Frederick, dismantles cameras, creating blueprints of their anatomy, subverting the usual production-to-waste narrative. This experimental work provokes contemplation about the current state of photography amid emerging technologies.
In fact, the
artist did that dismantling live in the gallery during the exhibition, then created
photograms and cyanotype blueprints from the parts. Those results have
accumulated and surrounded the workspace with an evolving collection of “mechanical
unmaking”. Circumstances have prevented me from revisiting to see the additions
to the archive, but some fine examples were in place when I visited soon after
the show began.
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| Unrepaired Cyanotypes Installation Image © Brian Rope |
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| The-Camera-Unrepair-Shop-UK-Frederick © Fernanda Pedroso |
A catalogue essay by Vahri McKenzie sheds further light on what Frederick is doing here. She once visited the Detroit Institute of the Arts and saw some of Diego Rivera’s murals depicting tourists visiting the nearby Ford Motor Company factory and watching the labourers at work creating cars. Visitors to this gallery during this exhibition similarly have had opportunities to watch this artist labouring to create artworks.
So, as the essay says, the artworks created become a collaboration between the artist, the cameras she “unrepairs” and the observers who went to the gallery to watch the creative process happening in the camera unrepair shop.
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| The-Camera-Unrepair-Shop-UK-Frederick © Fernanda Pedroso |
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| The-Camera-Unrepair-Shop-UK-Frederick © Fernanda Pedroso |
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| The-Camera-Unrepair-Shop-UK-Frederick © Fernanda Pedroso |
Frederick herself tells us in the catalogue that her primary modes of art practice are photography, printmaking and video. As an archaeologist, her art practice is informed by her interests in material culture and the way people interact with each other and their worlds.
So, this is a rather different exhibition and well worth visiting and exploring. It is correctly described as a durational performance and mixed media installation of cameras, cyanotypes and photograms. I wish I had had the opportunity to see parts of the performance first-hand, and more of the archive created since I saw its early stage.
It is worth watching the video of an Artist in Conversation: UK Frederick event. You can see gaps in the camera equipment on the shelves and the increase in the quantity of cyanotypes and photograms. During the event Frederick refers to the cyanotypes referencing the blueprint as a process of design, but also as a collection of prints representing the process that goes into making art that eventually goes onto the wall or wherever – in a sense each artwork is a portrait of an unrepaired camera. Her thought processes and discussion of ideas provide much for us to contemplate.
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| Screenshot from Photo Access video of UK Frederick Artist in Conversation event 30.08.2025 |
This review is also available on the author's blog here.
