Rotterdam Photo: Spencer Glover

Rotterdam Photo: Spencer Glover by Sara BennettMarch 29, 2023

©Spencer Glover, Made in China

The theme of this year’s Rotterdam Photo, an annual photography festival, was “Freedom Redefined,” and I was lucky enough to exhibit 34 prints from my work on women with life sentences, both inside prison and after they’ve regained their freedom. This week Lenscratch is dedicated to featuring five photographers whose work caught my eye.

Today is the work of Spencer Glover, whose incredibly beautiful still lifes created of cheap plastic goods, are a commentary on contemporary values placed on popular goods, much as the 16th century Dutch and Flemish painters commented on their contemporary society.

©Spencer Glover, Made in China

Made in China

My work is about photography itself – why we believe the camera never lies and our vernacular expectations within that. All my images are constructed – but true – they look at the boundaries of a photographic reality, but utilize a visual language we all understand. Although the work is constructed, and therefore fake, it exists in the real world and in real time – with real people or objects, in real places, doing real and often ordinary things, but maybe they are in places we might not expect. This contradiction of what’s real and not real, what we expect to see where, aims to create an uncertainty that hopefully should disconcert the viewer. So, I play with these assumptions of fact, fiction and fake, what we see and expect to see, and that gives me the opportunity to weave in issues such as identity, race, nationality, and control.

©Spencer Glover, Made in China

Born and now back living in Dublin, Ireland, Spencer Glover has lived in the UK, Italy, the US, and Middle East. He initially trained as a fine art painter, and has a degree and post-grad qualification from NCAD in Dublin. Spencer had a 20 year career as a publisher before returning to his art practice. Though he has included sculpture and painting in his work, his photographs, which started simply as notes and research for his paintings, have grown to become his primary medium. Next month, Glover has a solo exhibition opening at Rua Red Gallery in Dublin, Ireland.

Follow Spencer Glover on Instagram: @spencer_glover_photos