Coventry Biennial Presents: A Display of John Riddy’s Modernist Spaces

John Riddy, London (Heygate), 2006. Archival pigment print. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

John Riddy’s Modernist Spaces:

John Riddy is a London-based photographer who was born in Northampton and grew up in Coventry, where he completed his Foundation Course at Coventry Polytechnic (now Coventry University) in 1979/80.

Through his well-established photographic practice, he seeks to find what he describes as “both the factual and transcendent qualities of the everyday.” He often works in series dedicated to specific places, ranging from quieter corners of London to international sites that hold a particular interest for the artist.

This display includes a range of photographs taken in locations around the world between 1998 and 2006. Each image documents a modernist building, reflecting on how these aesthetics have spread and evolved, creating distinctive spaces across the UK and from Northern India to the centre of The Netherlands.

John’s images capture both interior and exterior spaces, exploring how landscape, human use and social conditions all affect the ways in which these buildings are received, regarded and understood.

Curatorial Context:

The Coventry Biennial team have been watching the loss of Modernist and post-war public art and architecture in the city over the past decade, and have witnessed this speed up and become more widespread over the past year.

We’ve noticed that this is not just the case in Coventry, around the UK and the world, cities and urban planners are demolishing and replacing the kinds of geometric, often concrete buildings, spaces and artworks that were built between the 1930’s and 1970’s.

We’re currently working with artists, curators, academics and community groups to explore the Legacies of Modernism(s) in Coventry and beyond.

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This display is a part of the Coventry Art Show, presented alongside British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers.

These photographs by John Riddy are presented as a response to Moments of Being, one theme of the British Art Show programme that takes its title from Virginia Woolf’s description of fleeting moments when we experience the world with particular intensity.

The artists working with this theme similarly turn inward, exploring the boundaries between mind and body, reality and imagination, suggesting that looking inward can help us understand ourselves and the world around us.

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The project has been generously supported through Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants.

All artworks are courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

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