on the road again
Homer Sykes

exhibition venue: Town Hall

America, continent of idiosyncrasy, captured in the raw over a period of thirty years and photographed with refreshing candour and affectionate humour.

This is a very personal picture, an unique glimpse of everyday ‘down home’ America without the cellophane wrapping. A journal in pictures and words of an America which seems scarcely to have changed as photographs flow seamlessly across the decades.

Homer Sykes has turned this immense counry of vast spaces and ordinary people into an intimate album of everyday encounters. With a keenly tuned eye and a sense of the absurd, his art is to turn the mundane into the surreal, to infuse the normal with a sense of humour and elevate it to the extraordinary.

(Photo: “Groom Cross and Lorry” from Mansion Editions book “On the Road Again” by Homer Sykes/Network Photographers.)

Biography / curriculum vitae:
Born in Vancouver, Canada, Homer Sykes has spent the last twenty five years inexorably becoming one of the foremost recorders of the British scene.

He has published six books on Britain being more or less in complete control as far as researching, writing and editing were concerned. While never feeling that it was necessary to go to the other side of the world to take great pictures, he has photographed just about everywhere and his great unpublished book ‘Life’s a Beach’, photographs of sun, sand, blue skies and great hotels, which will one day be commissioned is our loss!!

Once a Year - traditional British customs 1977, The English Season 1987, Mysterious Britain 1993, The Storm is Passing Over, with Roy Kerridge 1995, and his latest Celtic Britain 1997, and The Village Pub, have kept his distinctive images in front of a wide audience. Exhibitions include Traditional British Calendar Customs at the Arnolfini Bristol in 1977, A British Eye on the World, MOMA, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and The English Season, South Bank Gallery, London. On-going editorial clients include The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer Magazine and Newsweek, whilst Brittany Ferries, The National Heritage Lottery Fund, Bass Ale and Jaguar Japan are amongst his corporate clients.

He has lectured at L.C.P. and Newport College of Art and held workshops with Jorge Lewinski and Mayotte Magnus in London. He is a member of Network Photographers and is currently working on a long-term project in America.

For further information on Homer Sykes 's work visit this web site: www.duckspool.com/tutors/Homer%20Sykes/homer_sykes.htm
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