Petal Dance on the Glass

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

This photograph is one of four in the Collection that featured in Daily Weeding, Kuba Ryniewicz's first photo book published in 2021. These photographs are structured as a series of mini-narratives both within the book that they form part of, but also by themselves. Ryniewicz offers through these images and within the book that they are part of, a poetic celebration of everyday life that is centred on the artist’s immediate surroundings and network of family and friends during the Covid lockdown period in Newcastle. In writing about the book, Dr Carol McKay, of the University of Sunderland calls Ryniewicz ‘a photographic rewilder, embracing ordinary people, places and things, welcoming them into his space and celebrating their beautiful coincidences and differences’. Some individuals, such as Ryniewicz’s husband, Jon, appear regularly in the book (including in the photograph Weeding); others appear intermittently. Alongside the people depicted in his photographs, are poetic and tender moments captured by the artist: a pot of ethereal flowers catching the sun in Petal Dance on the Glass, washing billowing exuberantly on the line in Freedom of the Laundry, and a cow in a field against a backdrop of an industrialised landscape in Cow, Town, Moor. The Polish-born British photographer explores his adopted home with a simple palette that is suffused often with feelings of joy and a recognition of life’s simple pleasures.

Born in Poznan, Poland, Kuba Ryniewicz now lives in the North East of England. Ryniewicz studied philosophy in Poland before moving to Newcastle in 2004 to study Photography. Graduating with a degree in contemporary photographic practice from Northumbria University, he soon established himself in fashion and editorial photography as well as participatory art projects, shot with passersby or in schools. His photography challenges traditional portraiture and travel chronicles to narrate unheard stories in the varied contexts of landscape, history, fashion and culture. His work has featured in publications ranging from the Financial Times and Creative Review to Dazed and Wallpaper and has been shown at venues such as the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (2019); and Newcastle Contemporary Art (2022).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Kuba Ryniewicz (1980 - )

Title

Petal Dance on the Glass

Date

2021

Medium

Photograph - C Type print

Dimensions

height: 45cm width: 55cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, March 2024, Art XUK project 2023-24

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 26 March 2024

GAC number

19292/1