Tuesday 18 - Sunday 23 May 2010

10am - 5pm

Informal Gallery Talk: Thursday 20 May at 12 noon

"I remember as a boy, gazing at the glittering sea from the bay of my bedroom window - a tantalising glimpse of water viewed beyond the harbour wharf. From this vantage point, I often imagined I could tell the state of the tide, for my litmus-strip of water seemed always to have a greater clarity, a darker hue, when the tide was high, giving the sea an illusion of proximity. Such childhood imagination was prone to error, and remained so until the day I made what was, for me, a momentous discovery...

The tide-table became an indispensible addition to my already over-laden pockets, stuffed as they were with every conceivable necessity that goes to make up a small boy's survival kit. I could now plan my seaside adventures days in advance. Low water was tide-tabled for floundering in the shallows, learning to swim, or digging for bait on wormcast-clustered sands. The attraction of high water was, above all, traipsing for miles along the pebbled shore, beachcombing for 'treasures' only visible to a child's eye.

Looking back, it does not seem such a far cry from those boyhood days, when nowadays I find myself wandering along the shore, beachcombing, as it were, with a camera, guided still by a tide-table."

In his first solo exhibition at Harbour House, Dick Todd presents a series of photographs exploring the foreshore.

Dramatic and atmospheric black and white prints contrast with semi-abstract colour images of rock formations, reaching up to A2 in size, in a body of work characterised by strong, graphic composition.

Dick uses film photography and produces silver gelatin archival prints in his darkroom. Colour prints are scanned and presented as limited edition inkjet prints.

Dick Todd studied photography in Nottingham in the 1980s, and has exhibited widely since, as well as teaching photography in Sheffield and Totnes.