Wolverhampton Art Gallery presents Oliver Frank Chanarin’s first UK solo project, A Perfect Sentence

Oliver Frank Chanarin’s new exhibition A Perfect Sentence combines analogue photography and a state-of-the-art robotic system. At the centre of the installation are two machines, made by the artist in collaboration with Tom Cecil and Ruairi Glynn, which select photographs from an archive of over 150 framed works. They function according to an impenetrable logic, continuously identifying, hanging, rehanging and stacking the photographs for the duration of the exhibition.

Interrogating the photographic image in the age of the algorithm, A Perfect Sentence explores the shifting terrain of photography and commodification of attention.

Oliver Frank Chanarin says: “There is an uncanny sense that the work is watching us just as much as we are watching it, and it’s not necessarily a good feeling at all. There‘s something about the way the photographs are handled indiscriminately by the machines - the intimately human analogue prints bristle against the brutally mechanistic display. It goes against the grain of the images, and there is a sense that we are entering a factory rather than a gallery. Inevitably we are left to reflect on the life of photographs; the myriad ways in which they circulate and accrue our attention or get ignored, and the hidden forces that shape these experiences.”

Commissioned and produced by Forma in partnership with Wolverhampton Art Gallery and seven UK arts organisations, A Perfect Sentence presents a selection of photographs captured by Chanarin in 2021-22. The images portray encounters with strangers and collaborative photoshoots with various communities across the UK. The photographs explore the complex experience of creating documentary photography in an era when the act of being seen provokes conflicting desires and anxieties.

Chanarin produced over 3,000 colour negatives, from which he hand-printed unique C-Type prints in the darkroom. Many of the prints include handwritten notes, highlighting the evolving printing process, the fluid nature of identity and the subjectivity involved in creating images.

City of Wolverhampton Council Director of City Economy and Partnerships, Ian Fegan, said: “Wolverhampton Art Gallery is thrilled to host A Perfect Sentence and work with Oliver Frank Chanarin and Forma on our winter exhibition. In 2022, the project offered an opportunity for Oliver to work with Wolverhampton School of Art and several community groups in the city to capture portraits of local people. These photographs will be added to images captured across the UK for this national and international touring exhibition, making the show in Wolverhampton unique to our location.”

A Perfect Sentence was commissioned and produced by Forma in partnership with eight UK arts organisations: Artes Mundi, Cardiff; KARST, Plymouth; Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London Corporation; Norfolk Museums Service (Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Norwich, and Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth); original projects; Great Yarmouth; QUAD, FORMAT International Photography festival and Derby Museums, Derby; and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton. Commissioned in association with Images Vevey and Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

A Perfect Sentence has been made possible through generous funding from Arts Council England and Outset Contemporary Art Fund, and an Acquisition Commission grant from Art Fund. In addition, National Lottery through Arts Council Wales, Kick The Dust and the City of London Corporation’s Inspiring London Through Culture grants programme have supported the productions in Wales, Great Yarmouth and London respectively. 

The exhibition opens from Saturday, 2 November 2024, and runs until Sunday, 23 February 2025. The exhibition is free to the public. Wolverhampton Art Gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 10:30am to 4:30pm and Sunday from 11am to 4pm. For more information, please visit www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk.