Artist Nat Faulkner has opened his first public exhibition, 'Strong water,' at Camden Art Centre in London. The show features large-scale photographic works and installations, including 'Aperture (Iodine),' which uses a light-sensitive iodine solution to filter light through the gallery's Victorian skylights, and a multi-panel silver gelatin print of an Italian scrap facility. Faulkner, winner of the Camden Art Centre Emerging Artist Prize at Frieze 2024, discusses his analogue, process-driven practice, likening the darkroom to a collaborator that introduces elements of chance.
The exhibition highlights a significant moment for an emerging artist, following a major prize win, and underscores a contemporary fascination with the materiality and alchemical processes of pre-digital photography. Faulkner's work, which visualizes concepts like light and dark, positive and negative, connects the physical act of photography to broader themes of transformation and presence, positioning him within a current of artists re-engaging with analogue techniques and their conceptual possibilities.