BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! has announced that their next exhibition will be DISRUPTION by Nigel Grimmer from February 18 to March 15, at BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery Café (details below).
The exhibition features highlights from Grimmer’s series Analogue Disruptions, Collaborative Disruptions, and Material Disruptions.
British photographer Nigel Grimmer is known for using physical props in his work. These props can appear in the photos, be part of the frames, or be attached to the photographs themselves. Grimmer has moved away from using photography as a method to record the world and our experiences within it. Instead, his practice can be seen as a critical apparatus to examine photography itself, a tool to examine the tool.
Analogue Disruptions is a visual investigation of queer self-representation within social media, specifically dating apps and Instagram. He works with volunteers from these platforms to create portraits. The works playfully disruption the boundaries between analogue and digital media. By obscuring the model’s face, he sets out to critique photographic history and traditional practices.
Analogue Disruptions (Parks, Deleted) © Nigel Grimmer
Collaborative Disruptions sees Grimmer questioning the sole authorship of photographs. He produces works with his models, who possess skills that can be utilised in the creative process. In the knitting works, Grimmer collaborates with knitwear designer Daniel James. Grimmer photographs James, and James knits the backgrounds and physical interventions that adorn the frames. In recent additions to the series, Grimmer creates fantasy collaborations with artists, including Piet Mondrian.
Material Disruptions is driven by Grimmer’s desire to restore time, labour, and materiality to a medium that has largely become instantaneous and intangible. He disrupts contemporary digital photographic practices with a range of traditional crafting techniques, such as knitting, collage, pleating and tufting. Grimmer chooses to distort digital photographs, never intended to have a physical manifestation, images from social media and dating apps. He highlights the tension between digital and analogue practices, combining methods that take one click with those that take hours of manual labour.
Analogue Disruptions ( L) Dan, Throw (R) Francesco, Ghost © Nigel Grimmer
BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! is a programme by The Little Black Gallery launched in 2018 and curated by co-founder Ghislain Pascal, that promotes queer and gay fine art photography. It now represents more than 87 photographers from 34 countries – including China, India, Iran, Kenya and Russia, where gay rights are repressed, and queer lives are under constant threat.
BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! includes a bi-annual magazine, books, zines, exhibitions, a new podcast, photography courses, and the main online art platform. The first Gallery Café opened in Fitzrovia, London, in October 2024. It serves its own French wine (red, white, rosé & sparkling), beer (a pilsner brewed & bottled in London), and organic coffee from Colombia.
Nigel Grimmer’s Disruption exhibits at the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery Café from February 18 to March 15.
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