When done well, art can give voice to the voiceless and bring visibility to those that are hidden. Art is a powerful tool to chanhe the world.

Photographers Anthony Luvera and Rory Carnegie have both created fascinating collaborative projects in partnership with rough sleepers.

In his project Assembly Anthony Luvera gave homeless people disposable cameras and audio recorders to tell their own stories, Anthony also assisted them to create self-portraits in places important to themselves.
His exhibition Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) was exhibited at the PRSC last winter. It featured questions about homeless provision sent to hundreds of councils accross the UK and the responses recieved from the councils. This exhibition was made in partnership with the Museum of Homelessness and Tate Liverpool.

Images from FAQ exhibition & workshops at PRSC November 2019

For his project ICON, Rory Carnegie teamed up with the charity Crisis, and arts centre The Old Fire Station in Oxford to reproduce iconic British photographs with homeless people as models. PRSC is working with Rory & the Old Fire Station to bring the ICON exhibition to Bristol.
In 2002 Rory worked with young asylum seekers in Oxford, helping them to produce images & text exploring their experiences and exhibiting the results in the entrance space at Modern Art Oxford.

Homeless people recreate a classic Beatles image for Rory’s ICON project

In this evening, Rory and Anthony will present these projects, discuss the experiences they had making this work and share the principles and priorities which led to them creating such important work.

This talk will look at the way that artists can choose to empower or diminish their subjects, the way that power relationships between artist and subject can either reinforce or challenge current inequalities, and at the responsibility that artists have to consider the impact of their work in the wider social context.