Focal Point Gallery are very pleased to bring together two new bodies of work by photographer Martin Newth, Room Shutter and Houses.  

For the series Room/Shutter Martin Newth has used the curtains in domestic bedrooms to replicate the action of a camera's shutter over an entire night. At dusk the camera is set up to point at a window and the aperture is left open to slowly photograph the drawn, patterned curtains in low light. In the morning, eight or nine hours later, the curtains are opened so that the view through the window is also recorded, seemingly superimposed onto the pattern. Through this process the room becomes both the camera and part of the subject. The day and night (and their ratio) are shown in one image. Sunlight pierces the crack between the curtains to produce an overexposed slash of white light. The photographs present two views of nature simultaneously: the one through the window; and the other, an idealised, repeated view of nature on the patterned curtain.

In the Houses series the photographs record suburban houses late at night. The exposure times are two hours. Although the range of houses reflect the individuality of our homes, these ordinary residences are shown in a way that they cannot actually be seen in reality or, indeed, at the time of exposure. Seen from this detached viewpoint, they become portraits of the spaces we inhabit but they have gained a supernatural quality in the making with every aspect of light and detail being heightened, giving rise to odd shadows and strange light sources.

Martin Newth graduated from the Slade School of Art with an MFA in Fine Art Media in 1999. He is currently Subject Leader of the BA Photography course at Camberwell College of Arts. His recent shows include 'Vanishing Point' - an exhibition of a series of night time photographs at MAC Gallery, Birmingham and most recently 'Andmoreagain' - a group exhibition exploring the relationship between time and the photographic at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool in 2006 and Solar Cinema - 2006-2007.