From left: John Shuptrine’s Flour Mill, Melissa Burgess’ Eggleston Hotel and Martin McFadden’s Only Way In.
Martin McFadden, director and curator of Manchester's 1212 Gallery, is exhibiting photographs alongside the works of Richmond painter Melissa Burgess and Lynchburg photographer John Shuptrine. All three are interested in the built landscape: broken windows of derelict warehouses, the altered interiors of abandoned motels.
Or, as Burgess explains her "You Are Here" series of landscapes featuring buildings, "Old ones with the sweet smell of lead paint and old pine timbers. The rusty artifacts resting in their dusty perimeter. Or the forgotten vegetation that casts overgrown shadows and cuts strange beams of sun through an interior. The light traffic on lost streets. It's mine. I take it home to preserve." And a good thing, too. One of her pieces is a portrait of the collapsed Eggleston Hotel.
McFadden, a licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, England, stops and lingers on the "Unnoticed," gazing at the brick walls and windows of buildings and presenting them as one would search for recognition in a person's face.
Shuptrine's "Unspace" takes the viewer into dimly lit, busted up and neglected spaces, where people once talked, laughed and worked, but for whatever reason, now they're gone.
The shows open Nov. 8 at 2 p.m., and they're up through Dec. 20. For more information, call 233-9957 or visit 1212galleryrva.com .
