Gareth McConnell

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Gareth McConnell (b.1972, Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland) is an artist living and working in London.

McConnell studied at the West Surrey College of Art & Design (now Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College), graduating in 1996 and undertook his MA Photography at the Royal College of Art, London in 1999.

McConnell has produced a number of photographic series with a wide ranging subject matter. For example his Night Flowers series depicts the various flowers planted by municipal spaces such as office buildings and libraries in the dead of night. Using only available light provided by street lamps, his photographs necessitate long exposures, extending the photographic moment and capturing a passage of time, which gives them an intense, almost cinematic quality. McConnell has also made a successive series of simple but highly eloquent portraits of figures whose lives can border on the extreme, such as his powerful portraits of loyalists in the Albert Bar in his hometown of Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, intravenous drug users, patrons of a local boxing gym and the young homeless living in institutions.

He is represented by Counter Gallery.