The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire is the county museum and art gallery for Lincolnshire. It is an amalgamation of the Usher Gallery and the City and County Museum, with the museum housed in a new, purpose-built building close by the Usher Gallery. The Usher Gallery has an established programme of inviting contemporary curators and artists to exhibit modern and contemporary artwork in the main galleries alongside the Usher collection. Commissioning is a key strand of its programme, with artists working on many scales in disparate mediums (sculpture, sound, writing, and dance) across both gallery and non-white cube spaces.
For In Another Place The Collection will present artwork by contemporary photographer Mandy Lee Jandrell. The image connects to Evidence in Camera an exhibition of her work that stems from her interest in aerial surveillance photography and from the way photographs are made and how they mimic the functionality of the eye, but how they serve to trick our perception. It is not only about what the surveillance images depict, but also their interpretation or the way they are perceived. This work uses the idea of ‘decoy’ as a reference, deliberate actions and constructions that were set up deliberately to deceive aerial reconnaissance photographers and interpreters.
Jandrell was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1975. She completed her BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. Having moved to the UK in 1988, she completed her MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally and reviewed in publications including The Guardian, The Observer, Art Review. She is currently Head of BA (Hons) Photography at Falmouth University.
The Collection’s billboard, located in the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough, will enable it to explore how it develops its collections through commissions and exhibitions and transforms access to historic/permanent collections through engagement with contemporary art. It will raise its profile with an audience that is potentially unfamiliar with it and one that does not necessarily visit Lincoln very often or art galleries.
Jandrell’s exhibition complements an exhibition hosted by The Collection and Usher Gallery, which aims to relate the story of aircraft development, production and operations in the county and the impact and contribution Lincolnshire had on the successful outcome of the First World War.