Introducing Contemporary Collective x Bankside Hotel's Spring Artist Residency ft. Samuel Ryde

Artists in Residence: 4th April - 18th June 2023

Bankside Hotel, Makers Studio, London SE1 9JU

Bankside Hotel x Contemporary Collective are thrilled to welcome London-based photographer Samuel Ryde to the Art Yard Studio as their Spring Artist in Residence. In the studio from the start of April to mid June, Samuel will begin a brand new series. ‘The Fifteen Minute Series’ to directly reflect the area the Bankside Hotel is located in. In addition to creating new works, throughout his residency Samuel will explore and exhibit ongoing projects in fresh hangs, bringing a new energy and content to the studio.

Influenced by the themes of observation and exploration and the urge to notice new things, Samuel’s new series will examine the overlooked but often maligned accidental remnants of modern life and the things we leave behind. Looking at Bankside’s surrounding area of Southwark which has become one of the fastest-chaging and most diverse areas in London, Samuel will walk fifteen minutes due south, due east, due west and due north of the hotel. Spending a week on each route, Sam aims to capture and present the various histories and characteristics of each route, the stories involved, and the evolution of the buildings roadways and people.

In addition to this new series of works, Samuel plans to exhibit his ongoing ‘12:34’ project in either print or projection and also plans to experiment with large-format printing with the goal of allowing the viewer to fall into the image and engage with every inch that printing in large scale will offer. Expanding on these goals, Samuel plans to collaborate with local artists inviting them into the studio to create directly on the studio windows.

For the duration of his residency, Samuel will take over the Contemporary Collective Instagram account to document his experience in the studio space. This takeover will feature process shots and final artworks to provide insight into the artist’s creative process, as well as weekly summaries including video clips of various activities taking place in the residency space and the development of ongoing work.

About Samuel's Practice:

Samuel Ryde is a London based photographer with a passion for noticing the un-noticed objects and architecture of everyday human life. Through his lens, remarkable characters emerge from unremarkable spaces: Hand dryers in washrooms, telephone boxes on street corners, derelict buildings daubed with old signs and new graffiti - all of them tell accidental stories and remnants of moments shared by other people in another place and time.

Samuel’s debut book ‘Hand Dryers’, with a foreword by Sir James Dyson, was published by Unicorn in 2020. Representing the industrial object we’re all instantly familiar with but asking the viewers to take a fresh look at the world it is in with the way we treat the anonymity of a bathroom. The release enjoyed features in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New York Magazine plus others.

Samuel’s constitution of his other long term project, 12:34 pm, in which he has documented the time 12:34 pm every day since 2012 was recently watched by over a million people on the BBC. This project attempts to capture the mundane, everyday moments of life to gather them in true honesty to try and ascertain what your life would look like in a snap shot, if it was average, from a distance.

View the full collection of Samuel's artworks

Residency events:

Thursday 15th June, 18:00 - late: End of Residency Drinks & Exhibition

Residency Partners:

For any further information, please do not hesitate to contact Jenna Sachs: Jenna@DegreeArt.com / 020 3701 7412 / www.DegreeArt.com