Akeroyd Collection

Artists

Ingrid Pollard

b. 1953, Georgetown, Guyana; Lives and works in Northumberland, UK.

Ingrid Pollard is a British artist, photographer, and researcher. She earned her degree from the London College of Printing in 1988 and later pursued a Masters in Photographic Studies from Derby University, which she completed in 1995. In 2016, she was awarded a PhD from Westminster University. Her work primarily utilizes portrait photography and traditional landscape imagery to dissect complex social constructs, particularly those related to British identity and racial difference. Pollard has cultivated a social practice deeply concerned with themes of representation, history, and landscape and its intersection with race and the materiality of lens-based media. She is closely affiliated with Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers, which developed in the 1980s when she was an integral part of a collective of British artists advocating for Black creative expression. Her work was prominently featured in group exhibitions such as The Thin Black Line, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1985), D-Max (1987), and Self-Evident (1995) at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. During this period, she produced a series of photographs titled Pastoral Interludes, which challenged prevalent stereotypes that place Black people in predominantly urban settings. From 2005 to 2007, Pollard curated Tradewinds2007, an international residency exhibition project culminating in an exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands. Her participation has extended to group exhibitions at institutions such as the Hayward Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2022, her exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning was nominated for the Turner Prize and presented at Turner Contemporary, Margate, and MK Gallery, Milton Keynes.

Recent solo exhibitions include Residency 3, Parfitt Gallery, Croydon College, Croydon (2011); Belonging in Britain, Parliament Building, Barbados (2009); Spectre of the Black Boy, Kingsway Gallery, Goldsmiths, London (2009); Working images, London South Bank University, London (2006); Points of View. Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Sussex (2003); and Selective Yield, Wysing Arts Gallery, Cambridge (2001). Recent group exhibitions include Seeing Things Differently, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2012); Recording Britain, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2012); Thin Black Lines, Tate Britain, London (2011); Green in Black and White, Winchester Gallery, Winchester (2007); Garden of Eden – The Garden in Art, Kunsthalle in Emden, Emden (2007); How to improve the World, Hayward Gallery London (2006); Down the Garden Path, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2005); Travelouge, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2002); and Where are We?, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2001).

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Exhibitions

Awards