Category / Art Direction / Concept / Design & Dev / Photography / Portrait
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Ghillies
Rowe’s Wildmen costumes, also known as Ghillie suits, are a unique representation of the carnivalesque in contemporary visual culture. They subvert traditional norms and hierarchies by using accumulated domestic materials that are fading from significance to create decorative wearable landmasses. This emphasis on physicality and the body reflects the carnivalesque’s celebration of diversity and complexity.…
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Hulked
This film is part of a pilot creative heritage project about the Thames sailing barges called ‘Hulked’. The film is shot around and within the hulk of the Surrey barge which was left to rot on Glass Bottle Beach in Lower Halstow, Kent UK. The piece was conceived by Anna Braithwaite who also performed in…
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Rope Cycle
‘Rope Cycle’ is series of vignettes produced in collaboration with Anna Braithwaite whilst working as composer-in-residence at Chatham Historic Dockyard. The costume and movement development grew from a body of research and engagement collected around the endless spaces and huge machinery of the Victorian Ropery. The central character in Anna Braithwaite perfomance highlights role sailors…
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Fortopia
During his year as Artist in Residence at Fort Burgoyne, for the Pioneering Places Year of Engagement, Matt Rowe developed a series of still and moving images that echo the atmosphere of the site. He has investigated aspects of the fort’s heritage by considering not only its role as a site of civil defence and military…
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John Barleycorn Must Die
Sat 15thJune-Sun 25 Aug 2019 open Mon-Sat 9am-5pm,Sun 10am-4pm www.newbreweryarts.org.uk The exhibition brings together a collection of work by artist Matt Rowe and accompanying research materials gathered in collaboration with curator Laura Mansfield. The artefacts and artworks reflect upon the story and tradition of John Barleycorn. Appearing in a 17thCentury English folk song of the same…
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Grit in the Oyster
Grit in the Oyster is a body of work by Matt Rowe that represents the often overlooked rituals and aesthetics of carnivalesque culture in the tradi- tional British seaside resort, with a particular focus on the coastal town of Folkestone. For Rowe, this work reflects the town as a cultural space wherethe conventions and boundaries…
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Passage
https://vimeo.com/157286732 For Cheriton lights 2016 Matt Rowe has created a multi media Installation, that explores the eerie symbolism of friendly societies and overlooked thoroughfare’s of Cheriton.Using holographic projection and experimental photographic techniques, Matt Rowe has merged images and sounds , animating a hinterland at the margins of community. CHERITON LIGHT FESTIVAL 2016Strange Cargo will once again… -
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Dark Harvest
Dark Harvest Working on behalf of Strange Cargo for the Cheriton Lights Festival Matt Rowe has developed a series of installations, projections and sculptural assemblages that seek to reignite something of Cheriton’s rural past. Appearing in shop windows and on house fronts, the works infiltrate the town, transforming the locality with imagery from traditional folk…
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Where Has all The Good Time Gone?
Matt Rowe presents us with the faded spectacle and isolated amusements. He has manipulated the photo with washes of colour or digital additions. We see the highlighted edges of a ride, the lights of an amusement arcade, tempting us with echoes of a past glamour, with packed crowds and good times. The conscious choice of a memoir aesthetic suggests the images are from the past. With an aura of nostalgia the photographs not only present a longing for a prior era but further anticipate the changes yet to occur on the Rotunda site.
