press release

Join us to celebrate the 10th year of FORMAT, this time inspired by the fascinating theme of EVIDENCE.

Featuring: Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel, Yann Mingard, Andrea Botto, Thomas Keenan & Eyal Weizman, Mishka Henner, Simon Menner, Regine Petersen, LA-X Collection Klaus Weidner, Tiane Doan na Champassak, Sara-Lena Maierhofer, Lukas Einsele, Miti Ruangkritya, Giorgio Di Noto, Tiphanie Mall, João Pina, Cristina De Middel, Natasha Caruana, Murray Ballard, Edmund Clark, Arianna Arcara & Luca Santese, Stéphanie Solinas and Justice for Domestic Workers with Werker Magazine.

For the 2015 edition of FORMAT Festival the main exhibition at QUAD Gallery takes its cue from the legendary work Evidence by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel from 1977. The show curated by Lars Willumeit and Louise Clements presents a diversity of contemporary artistic positions that all use their own visual strategies to explore, question and undermine our preconceptions of evidence and its use within the medium of photography, art and visual culture. The exhibition features a wide range of fascinating international artists whose works interrogate the relationship between image and knowledge.

Throughout the show artists remind us that not only does the camera test our ability to trust, but more fundamentally it provokes us to question how we determine the truth, beyond reasonable doubt, when photographic representation inherently instils within us through the history of documentary, a notion of trust. The scope of visual narratives in the investigations by the artists who look at the production of evidence, bring into view the tensions between probability and truth, between authenticity and doubt.

In Beyond Evidence we invite the audience to explore this territory and indulge in a wonderful combination of works from the archive to contemporary installation all exploring the complexity and ideas of evidence.

FORMAT is organised by QUAD and the University of Derby.