Fragments of a River

Angela Blažanović’s practice, which incorporates sculpture and photography, investigates the relationship between the natural and the artificial. In her series installed at the King Edward Station titled Fragments of a River, she has photographed repurposed discarded objects retrieved from the banks of the river Thames in London. Blažanović started this project in September 2018 after she first visited the shore of the river Thames. She was interested in the random objects that would wash ashore, stating “…I realized that we are so used to seeing any kind of waste and rubbish scattered around everywhere that we do not question their existence; we accept it as part of the landscape. I started imagining where the objects came from and what stories lay behind them.”

A piece of rope, a blue plastic ball, bottles, and wire, amongst other found debris, are combined to form delicately balanced sculptural arrangements. Blažanović would typically create one sculpture per day, relying on her daily findings to create a sort of record of her outing. In carefully composing these sculptures to create what the artist called a “moment of balance” which almost anticipates an eventual collapse, she invites her audience to reevaluate the purpose of this waste and breathes new life into objects that were forgotten on the river’s shore. Blažanović uses these poetic images to evoke for the viewer the invisible narratives and histories that objects carry with them. While these images are void of figures, these largely human-made objects also evoke the relationship between humans and their environment, specifically the current environmental crisis that affects us all.

Curated by Capture Photography Festival and Booooooom
Presented in partnership with Booooooom and InTransitBC