David Hockney ‘pieced together’

On February 6th, 2025, I went with my photography course to visit the Bradford science and media museum where David Hockney had his ‘Pieced together’ exhibition on display. This exhibition was a collection of imagery and moving image, he uses a ‘joiner’ format where he builds his own creation out of multiple images he has taken. This technique creates a new piece of work that is completely his perspective.

The image I was most drawn to was captioned ‘My mother at Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire’ this was an image David Hockney created by using this ‘joiner’ technique; by doing this he is able to create a piece of work that is uniquely his and has a unique composition. With the subject being his mother, this made me think of the strong, nurturing presence that mothers hold, but in this image, she is all wrapped up in her raincoat, looking quite cold and vulnerable, the juxtaposition of this adds a new layer to this piece of art.

This project impacted my personal practise in the sense of contextuality and thinking into the deeper meaning behind the decisions I make. Why am I including specific people in my work? What connotations does this provide? Are those connotations inline with the message I am trying to portray, or do they stray from the ideas and themes I am aiming towards? These are all questions I began to ask myself after visiting this exhibition, and important questions because the context of the subject can change the whole image to mean something completely different to what you initially thought.