Collectives Hub: DG03 Collective, time itself

Exhibition Overview:

Existence is inseparable from time. Our memories, bodies, relationships, environments and identities are continually shaped by what has been, what is, and what is yet to come. Time itself brings together eight lens-based artists whose practices explore these experiences through photography, moving image and expanded photographic processes such as pixel reconfiguration.

The exhibition considers how time is experienced through the body (Wang); remembered through domestic spaces (Day); embedded within landscapes (Chatzakis); and carried through migration (Yasavoli); relationships and changing identities (Chatterjee, Zhang). It also explores our relationship with the natural world and the possibility of futures beyond the human (Aliaj Essel).

While each artist approaches time from a distinct perspective, together the works consider how individual experiences become part of larger shared histories, memories and legacies. Through relationships between image, space and process, connections and tensions emerge across the exhibition.

In response to Photo Fringe’s theme, Future Histories, time itself reflects on how the present is continually becoming the past, and how our lives contribute to histories inherited by those who come after us. If all beings are shaped by time, then every life is also history in the making.

DG03 Bio:

DG03 collective is a London-based group of eight emerging lens-based artists who came together through the MA Photography programme at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. With members from the UK, Iran, Albania, Greece, China and India, the collective shares a commitment to exploring what it means to be human through conceptual, experimental and personal approaches to photography and expanded lens-based practices.

Across diverse methodologies, individual practices explore themes including identity, memory, family, gender, culture, belonging, relationships with nature, time, outer space and imagined futures. While each artist maintains an independent practice, dg03 provides a supportive and critical framework for collaboration, experimentation and the development of creative and conceptual boundaries.

Since forming, the collective has exhibited across London, including Intro at Peckham Safehouse 1 and Field Notes at Four Corners Gallery, and will present its third collective exhibition, Human:being, at Copeland Gallery this August. Individual members have also exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia and the US, alongside screenings and publications.

Members have received recognition from awards and organisations including World Press Photo Foundation, 6X6 Talent, TOTO Tasveer Awards for Photography, the John Ruskin Prize and Autoportrait.

Image credit: Sutirtha Chatterjee, Untitled 5, A New World, 2019-2026