Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin
SCARTI
31 January - 8 March 2014
TJ Boulting is pleased to present an exhibition in conjunction with our publishing side Trolley Books, of the original
‘scarti’ from the recent publication by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin.
Ghetto, Broomberg and Chanarin’s first collaboration with Trolley, was published ten years ago. It saw the then
creative editors and principal photographers of Colors Magazine document 12 contemporary gated communities,
from a maximum-security prison in South Africa to a psychiatric hospital in Cuba. Photographed entirely on large
format colour negative, Ghetto took three years to produce and over time has became a popular classic within photo
book history. It is now out of print.
‘Scarti di avviamento’ is the technical term in Italian for the paper that is fed thr ough the printing press twice before
making a book, to clean the drums of ink between print runs. This by-product is usually destroyed once the book is
printed. But in this case the ‘scarti’ – Italian for scraps - were saved and stored away by publisher Gigi Giannuzzi.
Following his untimely death in December 2012 this box was discovered.
In these scraps the layering of the original images from Ghetto appear almost purposeful. The twice-printed sheets
reveal uncanny and often beautiful combinations, both compositionally and contextually. In one the arm of a South
African prisoner drops casually into the scene of young Tanzanian refugees perched in a tree, whilst in another an
American octogenarian from ‘Leisure World’ retirement home sits almost perfectly atop the knee of a Kurdish lorry
driver.
These scraps would normally have been swept up and discarded from the factory floor. But in this exhibition of the
original ‘scarti’ they are elevated to original and fascinating works in their own right; but as the artists state: “In
truth they are nothing more than a series of little accidents.”
The exhibition also presents new work, ‘Scarti Of Scarti’, which were created during the printing of the Scarti book,
where without any interference by the artists, the new ‘scarti’ were printed on top of an Italian furniture catalogue.
The chance results create a further intriguing perspective to the original ‘scarti’ with seemingly unrelated but again
uncanny juxtapositions, whilst the possibilities to a potential infinity of scarti on scarti are opened up, and perhaps
ultimately, a totally black printed sheet of paper coming off the press.
