TESSA BUNNEY: EXHIBITS IN LAOS

Gallery artist, Tessa Bunney, is exhibiting her most recent series of photographs at Monument Books (Laos, Vietnam). The exhibit will be launched tomorrow evening, with an opening speech by the British Ambassador to Laos, and continues through to September 30th.

Since November 2012, Bunney has been photographing in Xieng Khouang—one of the most contaminated provinces of Vietnam—of unexploded bomb sub-munitions (UXO). She has documented the work of UCT6, an all-female team working for the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), who defuse the UXO's.

 Technician, UCT6 (2012) © Tessa Bunney

Read more about The Women of UCT6 and view additional photographs HERE.

Read the article in the Financial Times HERE.

View Tessa Bunney's video about the project HERE.

Tessa Bunney exhibits at Galeria Ratamo

Vuorilammen sauna and ice swimming hole, Jyväskylä, Finland (2010) ©Tessa Bunney

Gallery artist, Tessa Bunney, continues to be interested in the relationship of people to their environment and is currently working on new photographs in Laos. In the meantime, her Lakeice series continues to be well received, and is now being exhibited at the Galeria Ratamo in Jyväskylä, Finland. It's part of a group exhibition entitled Inostaa/Inspire and has toured to Finland from the United Kingdom.

"My aim with the project Järvenjää/Lakeice was to explore interrelations between people and their immediate environment; allowing the viewer to reflect on diverse uses of natural landscapes within the city.  To achieve this work I spent every day walking and travelling by local bus around Jyväskylä to the many lakes in and around the city. Initially, I’m working like a street photographer – nothing is predetermined; the series is built up by spending time out there experiencing changes in the weather and responding to what I see and the people I meet.  Later I spent time with the groups of ice swimmers who meet several times a week to relax, take a sauna and swim in a hole in the ice.

Sometimes in blizzard conditions and always in temperatures of between -5 and -20, this often meant wading knee deep in snow across frozen lakes to reach my chosen destination. I was fascinated with how the frozen lakes had transformed the city and they had become a temporary urban park with its specially constructed ice skating track with other more random paths carved out by ski-ers, dog walkers and pedestrians making short cuts from the houses on the otherside of the city.  The division between the land and water had disappeared". –Tessa Bunney