Assuming the Position I

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Matthew Arthur Williams’ work is multi-disciplinary: criss-crossing photography, sound and moving image, and encompassing a strong research-based element. In this work, the artist draws on his personal experiences to explore the place of different British communities within the UK’s rural landscapes. Like much of Williams’ work, Assuming the Position centres on questions of access and ownership within the UK countryside. In this pair of photographic portraits, the artist offers up a two-step sequence that draws particular attention to his momentary presence and then sudden absence within a dramatic Highland setting. In its simple power, the photographs ask us to question who can belong - and who might belong – in the British rural landscape.
Employing traditional darkroom photographic techniques, Williams’ work is strongly connected to that of earlier generations of British photographers, especially Ingrid Pollard, who the artist has exhibited alongside. Pollard has described Williams’ practice as being in ‘dialogue with her own’ and as questioning, with a unique curiosity, ‘the relationship of portraiture to landscape’.

Matthew Arthur Williams is an artist and DJ. Williams was born in London and now lives and works in Glasgow. He completed his BA at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2012. His recent shows have included Five by Five at Incubator, London (2024); Soon Come at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2023); and exhibits at Jupiter Artland and Johnson Terrace Gardens as part of a commission for Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. Williams has further developed exhibition projects and commissions with the Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow (2022); Viborg Kunsthal (2021); Street Level Photoworks (2019) and Transmission Gallery (2017). Williams’s research has recently been supported through programmes at CCA Glasgow, The Bothy Project, Hospitalfield and LUX Scotland. In 2023, Williams was awarded an Emerging Artist Residency at Cove Park, Scotland. He was awarded the Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship in February 2024 and nominated for Film London Jarman Award in 2023. Williams sits on the board of trustees for Bothy Project and is Lecturer in Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Matthew Arthur Williams (1989 - )

Title

Assuming the Position I

Date

2021

Medium

Photograph - Fibre-Based hand printed darkroom print

Dimensions

height: 33cm width: 43cm depth: 3cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, May 2024, Art XUK project 2024-25

Provenance

The Artist, from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 17 May 2024

GAC number

19307