Front Room: Broomberg & Chanarin

Exhibition Website

Apr 13 2016 - Sep 11 2016

The BMA presents the first U.S. exhibition of the dynamic collaborators Broomberg & Chanarin. Adam Broomberg (1970, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (1971, United Kingdom) have worked together since the late 1990s, challenging the concepts and structure of power through their photography-based practice. Their new body of work—photography, copper plates, sculpture, and film—highlight the changes technology has wrought on warfare, revealing the fallacies we tell ourselves about it.

Large-scale photographs show bullets that collided and fused midair during the Civil War along with high-precision prisms—the sort made in Germany during World War II that enabled scopes on firearms and the ability to kill an enemy from a great distance.

As part of this exhibition, the BMA will also present Broomberg & Chanarin’s 12-minute film, Rudiments (2015), which shows a group of young British cadets training at a military camp. As they learn drumrolls and how to march in formation, a bouffon (played by Hannah Ringham) arrives and disrupts them in an effort to mock the system that produced these cadets. The film’s title refers to the 40 rudiments that form the technical foundation of percussive music, including rolls, strokes, and paradiddles. The soundtrack is a dramatic, improvised score for drums by the American musician Kid Millions (also known as John Colpitts).

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Photography
  • International
  • Contemporary
  • Political / Satire / Documentary
  • Adam Broomberg
  • Oliver Chanarin

Exhibition Venues & Dates