The UK’s first photography festival dedicated to health, wellbeing and identity is underway. Remedy includes exhibitions in Lincoln, Skegness and Sutton-on-Sea, as well as public workshops, a symposium and a festival weekend at the Barbican Creative Hub in Lincoln from 19-21 June.
Featured artists include Cheryl Newman, Anthony Luvera, Rosie Barnes and JA Mortram, with subjects ranging from underdiagnosed autism in women and girls to historical representations of sickness, gender transition, and chronic illness.
At Lincoln Art Centre, Finnish photographer Emil Peltola offers a documentary style visual account of life with severe ME/CFS ME, while a group exhibition at Not Quite North in Lincoln showcases six emerging and established photographers.
Remedy’s aim is to build a long-term platform for photographers, artists and participants working at the intersection of visual culture and health. The festival is curated by Jeremy Jeffs and Marion Sander and is supported by a network of cultural and community partners, with funding from Arts Council England.
Jeffs says, ‘Health – and the cost of being ill – shapes so many people’s lives, yet thoughtful, critical photography about it rarely finds a platform. Too often the imagery is reductive or absent altogether. We wanted to change that. Remedy is about creating space for more honest, complex work, and doing it in a way that brings people with lived experience into the process as collaborators, not subjects.’
To mark its launch, the festival is offering an inaugural £5,000 commission for a UK photographer to produce a new body of work – a prize funded by the Usher Gallery at Lincoln Museum.
Remedy runs until 30 June. Find out more and see the full programme at remedyphoto.com.