| Dutch
photographer Hellen van Meene has received international critical
acclaim for her intimate 'fictional portraits' of adolescent
girls and androgynous boys that explore the amorphous space
between childhood and adulthood. This exhibition brings together
newly commissioned work made in the UK, alongside recent work
made in Japan, Germany, Russia and Latvia.
Van Meene does not
see her work as strictly portraiture but as a way of creating
a mood and exploring the subtleties inherent in the body,
in a particular environment, and at a particular time of life.
Her fascination with the grace and awkwardness that are the
physical and psychological hallmarks of youth is developed
in her newly commissioned work made with young people and
teenage parents in South West London. Here van Meene delves
into the territory of socially engaged documentary and a sense
of her subjects being caught or confined between two lives
is apparent.
Hellen van Meene was
born in 1972, and studied photography in Amsterdam and in
Edinburgh. Since her 1999 solo exhibition at The Photographers
Gallery, van Meene has shown work extensively, and was nominated
for The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize in 2001.
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