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Silver before Photography
Jonathan Ross's Gallery 286, London
April 3 - May 11, 2025
In this show Susan Gamble and Michael Wenyon muse on the photographic practice and organic material: coal and silver.

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‘Silver Before Photography’ is a hologram of English silverware manufactured before the invention of photography. The hologram presents the illusion of antique spoons and ladles, resting on a table.

Holography was possibly the last analogue photographic process to use silver salts. Here the twentieth-century medium provides a window onto silver objects from an age before photography.

The artists employ different media to reflect on the past and the sentimental lure of objects as they fade into history.
Gallery 286

Gallery walk through at Phillips (2022)
This shows Susan Gamble's holograms in a 'virtual reality' environment you can navigate yourself, showing the context in which her work is being presented at the preview show for Phillips ULTIMATE photography auction on November 22, 2022. Look for the 'Matterport' window on the linked page.

Susan Gamble interview on Phillips YouTube, 2022
Susan speaks about her work in the ULTIMATE auction and show, with the exhibition open to the public every day at Phillips, 30 Berkeley Square, London until the sale on November 22, 2022

Works at auction
Knickers & Stockings from the Body in Question, Susan Gamble, 1982
two transmission holograms chosen for the ULTIMATE auction on November 22, 2022 at Phillips, Berkeley Square, London
online catalogue

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The preview exhibition is free and open to the public from November 16–22, 2022. It will be the first time that these works have been seen in London since the exhibition Towards A Bigger Picture: Contemporary British Photographs, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1988 (above), when the museum acquired two of these works for their photography collection.

New article by Susan Gamble, 2021
Gamble, S. (2021). Gabriel Lippmann (1845–1921) & Frederick Ives (1856–1937): The French Physicist Versus The American Inventor in the Pursuit of Colour and 3-Dimensionality. International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media, 5(1), 38-57. Retrieved from journal website

Topaz Arts 21st celebration! Oct 24, 2021
Floored in the Covid Era, 2020: Pill and Bottles
A one-day presentation of a new installation piece by Wenyon & Gamble, at
Topaz Arts, Woodside, Queens NY
Viewing only on Sunday, Oct 24, 2021, 3-6pm: proof of vaccination will be required and face masks must be worn at all times indoors.
Come also to the day's celebratory dance and poetry events, but register for free tickets in advance.

A City Artist Corps Grants event

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In lockdown, artists Susan Gamble & Michael Wenyon made holograms on their bathroom floor, using their own medicines as the subject. They were surprised by the results – Floored in the Covid Era, 2020: Pills and Bottles is a visual memento of an anxious time.

This event is part of the 21st year celebration of Topaz Arts in Queens and supports the City Artist Corps Grants program, presented by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) and Queens Theatre.

Precision: Illustrative Technique in Art and Science
March 15 - April 25, 2021
The Art Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University

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Floored in the Covid Era, 2020: Pills & Bottles by Wenyon & Gamble

Precision brings together 27 artists who are inspired by one goal – to explain scientific facts through evocative visual language. They begin with abstract concepts and transform them into tangible marks of pencil, brush and photo emulsion that yield artworks that seduce us intellectually and emotionally. We are empowered to comprehend and delight in the realm of scientific knowledge.
–Yulia Tikhonova, curator

Courses
Holograms with Susan Gamble & Michael Wenyon
Penumbra Foundation New York
Classes will resume once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

A hologram is a three-dimensional image recorded onto a photographic emulsion on glass-plate or film, using a laser. This interactive demo, led by artists Susan Gamble & Michael Wenyon is for those wishing to learn more about this medium as an art form.

During the course you will see the set up required to build a hologram ‘camera’. In between exposing and processing a plate during the day, the artists will explain the history and oddities of this Cold-War technology.

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Denisyuk hologram intensive with Susan Gamble & Michael Wenyon
Penumbra Foundation, New York
May 23–24, 2020
(cancelled due to COVID-19)
Saturday & Sunday, 10 AM - 5 PM
This course will explore the Denisyuk Hologram, a type of hologram invented in the Soviet Union during the Cold War and used to document objects. It is one of the simplest types of hologram in terms of equipment, theory and method, making it one of the favored techniques for artists and individuals and ripe for exploration!
Participants will be able to work with the artists to produce their own images on 4 x 5 inch emulsion coated glass plates of high resolution.
Penumbra Foundation

Recent Books
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Library of Light
Jo Joelson, Lund Humphries, 2019
Library of Light brings together established and emerging practitioners who work with light as material or subject from theatre, music, performance, fine art, photography, film, public art, holography, digital media, architecture, and the built environment, together with curators, producers and other experts. Includes extended interview and color reproductions of holograms by Susan Gamble and Michael Wenyon.
Lund Humphries US
excerpt in Catalogs & Books

Cameraless Photography
Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2019
A concise historical overview of photographic images created independently of a camera. It surveys the corresponding techniques, including one hundred key images, photograms, chemigrams, luminograms, dye destruction prints, and more: two holograms by Susan Gamble in the V&A collection.
Thames & Hudson US website
excerpt in Catalogs & Books

Exhibitions

Out of Place
Magnan Metz Gallery 2016
Hyperallergic

Domes & Palaces – Constructing Science
New York Hall of Science 2016
Essay by Eleanor Heartney
Queens Chronicle

A Universe held up for Inspection
Magnan Metz Gallery 2012
video

More Exhibitions

Silver before Photography

Holograms and daguerrotypes

Jonathan Ross's Gallery 286, London, April 3 - May 11, 2025

Silver Before Photography, Wenyon & Gamble, 2016, laser hologram and objects.

Silver Before Photography, Wenyon & Gamble, 2016, installation, November 2016.

Silver on Silver 3, Wenyon & Gamble, 2016, daguerrotype.

Coal in Space 2, Wenyon & Gamble, 2016, hologram.

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Silver before Photography

Holograms and daguerrotypes