Nick Waplington
The artist and photographer Nick Waplington was born in Aden. His family traveled extensively during his childhood as his father worked as a scientist in nuclear industry. He studied art at Worthing Art College, Trent Polytechnic, and The Royal College in London.
He is noted for his conceptual approach to photography.
In 1985 Waplington went to live with his grandfather on the Broxtoe Estate in Nottingham where he began to photograph his immediate surroundings. Friends and neighbours of his family became his subject matter of choice. He continued with this work on and off for the next 15 years and from it came two books (Living Room and Weddings, Parties, Anything, both Aperture Foundation) and numerous exhibitions. (The book Weddings, Parties, Anything was called The Wedding for the American version only. )
Other Edens (Aperture 1994) focused on environmental concerns and while conceived and worked on at the same time as 'Living Room' was seen as a major departure in style and content. This work is global in its nature and its ideas are ambiguous and multi-layered.
Other bodies of work include the much-copied Safety in Numbers (Booth Clibborn Editions 1997). A bleak study of E culture in the mid 1990's and The Indecisive Memento(Booth Clibborn Editions 1999). .
Waplington's next published work was Truth or Consequences (Phaidon 2001), a pictorial game biased on the history of photography using the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico as a backdrop. In this work the rules of the 1950's television show inspired the concept of Waplington's photographic project.
"Learn how to die the easy way", Waplington's contribution to the Venice Biennale in 2001, expresses a yearning for the artistic and commercial freedom that the web might yet expose and a celebration of the dislocated reason behind conventional thoughts and media. "If, as I suspect," says Waplington, "the Internet has broken the stranglehold of governments and large media corporations on mass communication, then we could be in for a very exciting period of development on a number of different levels. Would a breakdown of current modes of social, moral and political cohesion be too much for a man to ask for?"
His other photographic books include You Love Life (Trolley Books 2005) in which the photographer uses pictures taken over a 20 year period to construct an autobiographical narrative.
The graphic novel "Terry Painter" was made in collaboration with Miguel Calderon in 2003. This and other projects with Calderon including "The Garden of Suburban Delights" have been exhibited in Europe and the US. He is currently represented in London and New York by Museum 52. In December 2007, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London showed his slide show in its study room of found internet photos, entitled "Synethesia". Also to be published are a series of ten books of found imagery called "You Are Only What You See,", with a separate catalog of original photos by Waplington called 'Double Dactyl' which was published by Trolley Books.
Public collections
- Guggenheim-Museum, New York, USA
- Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- The British Council, London, England
- National Gallery, Sydney, Australia
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA
- The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England
- The Castle Museum, Nottingham, England
- The Glasgow Museum, Scotland
- The Royal Danish Photographic Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
- The Harris Museum, England
- The National Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, England
- The Government Art Collection, London, England