Nick Waplington “Battleship Island” at White Conduit Projects, London

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Nick Waplington, Battleship Island Courtesy of the artist and White Conduit Projects, London © Nick Waplington

NICK WAPLINGTON
BATTLESHIP ISLAND

8 October – 7 November 2015
White Conduit Projects, London

White Conduit Projects is pleased to present an exhibition of Nick Waplington’s 1990s photographs of the ruins of Japan’s Battleship Island (Gunkanjima). This tiny abandoned island off the coast of Nagasaki, was once a coal mine with a population of 5000, squeezed into a complex maze of imposing concrete apartment blocks (Japan’s first high-rises). Vacated in 1974, Gunkanjima was recently approved as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Nick Waplington’s connections with Japan run deep. In the 1970s, his nuclear scientist father took the family to Japan to witness the construction of the country’s nuclear power stations. Waplington was fascinated by the Shuto Expressway (as featured in Tarkovsky’s science fiction film ‘Solaris’) and saw Japan as a nation in ascen­ dancy. As a photographer, he visited Japan frequently between 1989 and 2001. In 1997 the BBC commissioned him to make a film, for which he made a road trip that began in the deflated (but still hysterical) bubble of Tokyo and ended in the dark eerie ruins of Battleship Island (Gunkanjima).

Waplington’s photographs always engage with social reality. Whether he’s photographing illegal Jewish settlers on the West Bank (for the project ‘Settlement’) or the activities of Alexander McQueen’s fashion studio (for the project ‘Working Process’), he has a keen sense of history – of the human cycle of creation and destruction. His photo­ graphs of Gunkanjima are not the dizzying architectural spectacle beloved by today’s urban explorers, but a more sombre meditation on the passage of time. Like a spider that weaves an intricate web and sits in wait for its prey, Waplington presents us with a vision of human folly that we can’t help being caught up in.

Nick Waplington is a British pho­tographer based in London and NY. He received an ICP Infinity award in 1993, and represented the UK at the Venice Biennale in 2001. He has exhibited widely including solo shows at the Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Whitechapel Gallery, London, Tel Aviv Museum of Art and The Philadelphia Museum of Art. His work is held in a number of prominent museum collections including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and MoMA, New York.

White Conduit Projects
1 White Conduit Street
London N1 9EL UK
info@whiteconduitprojects.uk
whiteconduitprojects.uk

Opening hours
Wednesday/Thursday: 11am – 7pm
Friday: 12pm – 8pm (Basement 7pm – 11pm)
Saturday: 12pm – 7pm
Sunday: 11am – 5pm

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Nick Waplington, Battleship Island Courtesy of the artist and White Conduit Projects, London © Nick Waplington

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Nick Waplington, Battleship Island Courtesy of the artist and White Conduit Projects, London © Nick Waplington

Nick_Waplington_WCP-2
Nick Waplington, Battleship Island Courtesy of the artist and White Conduit Projects, London © Nick Waplington

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