Biography
Faye Chamberlain has worked consistently as a professional photographic artist since 1996, alternating between personal projects and commissioned works, many consultative and participatory in approach. Her work has enjoyed numerous exhibitions, publications and installations both within the UK and abroad. She has a proven track record of producing innovative works, creating exciting images and presentation methods tailored to specific audiences and environments.
Her photography encompasses a broad range of styles, including Landscape, Fine Art and Documentary. She constantly adds to a body of work, which is vivid and immediate, but imbued with a warm humanism and centres on people exploring their relationship with both each other and their environment.
After studying photography at Southfields College in Leicester (now simply Leicester College) Faye went on to graduate from Staffordshire University with a B.A(hons) Design: Photography. Since then she has worked on a wealth of exciting and eclectic commissions for various clients, including local councils, a nature Park, Public Arts companies and Art Galleries.
Faye is also a current Ffotogallery tutor.
Portfolio
No Place Like Home
No Place Like Home was a unique arts project culminating in a publication and exhibition at
Cardiff’s city centre homeless hostels, Tresillian House and The Huggard – which in 2011 were demolished to
make way for a brand new homeless facility. The project provided a means for the residents, staff and
service users to examine their relationship with these buildings before they were lost.
An
experienced educator, as well as an accomplished photographic artist, Faye Chamberlain rejects the
traditional role of the 'concerned' documentary photographer, aloof, separate, and able to offer us the
satisfaction of horrors and disgust at the plight of nameless victims at a safe distance. Instead, she
invites the full participation of the service users and staff at Tresillian House and the Huggard Centre,
inviting the viewer into an immediate and intimate relationship.
The resulting
portrait series conveys an amity and trust between artist and sitters – a group of dignified individuals,
actively engaged in the process of their own portrayal, which is acknowledged not only by their name but by
their former occupation; a subtle insight onto a life before and beyond their current situation.
Portfolio
Football Focus
Football Focus has been photographed since 1998 by Faye Chamberlain,
throughout each four-and-a-half-week football jamboree that is the FIFA World Cup. Whilst the world's media
analyse the events on the pitch in a minutia of detail, Chamberlain turns her camera on the people for whom
the World Cup is staged - the supporters.
Chamberlain's work captures the passion,
anxiety, humour and despair of the 550 million people worldwide, entrusting their dreams to the feet of
eleven men. Unable to influence their own emotional destinies, the fans gather in front of TVs to pray, as
part of a replica-wearing congregation, for a victory that would raise the value of their national pride and
justify their faith.
These un-staged photographs showcase people displaying their raw
emotions. One only has to look at the faces of the gathered crowds to see that the ramifications of the
events in the Host countries far away are as important as the events themselves.
Although
up to 16 years has passed, these photographs preserve forever the feeling that is generated when the world
stops for a month so that it's people can cling to the 32 opposing sides of a collective dream.
Portfolio
Dazzle Cardiff
Dazzle Cardiff is a series of public artwork panels, designed and
implemented by lead artists Faye Chamberlain (Cardiff based artist / photographer) and Robert Kennedy
(Cardiff based sculptor and sign writer). Sixty members of staff across a number of Admiral Insurance
departments were invited to take part in six 4-hour walks to photograph Wales’ capital city.
Each
group, with guidance from Faye and Robert, produced thousands of images featuring Cardiff at this point in
time. The work documents a myriad of perspectives - the present time in the city from the urban built
environment to the surrounding green parks and waterfront location of the Bay.
In addition,
fourteen words appear on the art panels. The text is a combination of Welsh and English and has been
selected by the artists and Admiral to represent Cardiff and the people who live, work and play in the
City.
The images are an intriguing mix of something that can be seen and read at a distance and
yet reveal a more complex perspective at closer inspection, and offering reflection upon the changing role
of a city. The panels are erected on these hoardings around the development site of Admiral Head Office,
Bridge Street, Cardiff.
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