Eva Bachmann

Book Launch: Halesworth, An Alternative Guide

Eva Bachmann

Double Event at The Cut – Saturday, 11 October

On Saturday, 11 October, The Cut will host a special double event:

11 am - Meet at The Cut Café
Guided walk through the locations featured in Eva Bachmann’s booklet
1:00–2:00 pm – Free lunch (booking essential)
2:00–4:00 pm – Solo show by Jane Prophet

Booking is essential – only 25 places available. Reserve your spot via The Cut’s website.

During her 2024 Summer Residency at The Cut, London-based artist Eva Bachmann explored Halesworth through a series of photographs capturing alternative landmarks that reveal the town’s unique character. She created a booklet of 36 images, presented with a fold-out map as a sleeve.

Copies of Halesworth, An Alternative Guide are available for £18 at The Cut, Halesworth Bookshop, Halesworth Library, or £16 (plus postage) when purchased directly from me.

Feel free to get in touch to order your copy.

Wiesbaden Foto Tage - Closed for Business

Eva Bachmann

I'm delighted that my series Closed For Business has been selected for the Wiesbaden Foto Tage Festival.

Wiesbaden Foto Tage
23 August – 9 September 2025

Closed for Business documents the timeless shopfronts of once-thriving London high streets, exploring the decline of small businesses, shifts in consumer behaviour, and the effects of commercial standardisation on inner cities. The series examines the challenges facing independent businesses and the broader impact on urban design. The homogenisation of city centres, dominated by corporate chains and shopping malls, has been accelerated by the pandemic and the growth of online retail. Although photographed in London, the images suggest a universal transformation of urban life.
Through her lens-based practice, Bachmann maps cultural memory, belonging, and the relationship between place and identity, reflecting on how built environments shape personal and collective histories.

Closed for Business, concertina book, cover
limited edition of 5

The photographs will be shown alongside a handbound, limited edition of five books. I'm currently working on a new, larger edition of the book, which will be ready in time for the festival.

ABBF at Peckham 24

Eva Bachmann

I'm excited to invite you to this year’s ABBF – A Bigger Book Fair, where I’ll be presenting a selection of both new and earlier artist books.

Opening Night:
Friday 16th May, 6 – 10 pm

Fair Continues:
Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th May, 11 am – 6 pm
ABBF / Peckham 24
Unit 8, Copeland Park
133 Copeland Road, London SE15 3SN


My selection will include:

(Keep an eye on this space – I’ll be adding links to new additions on my website soon.)

Urban Living

Eva Bachmann

Group Show: Urban Living

Curated by Stuart Evans


Exhibiting Artists: Nobuyoshi Araki, Michael Bach, Eva Bachmann, John Berry, Aliki Braine, Mat Collishaw, Rose Fin-Kelcey, Laura Oldfield Ford, Neville Gabie, Margrita Gruzberg, Daniel Greenfield Campoverde, Mustafa Hulusi, Robert McLeod, Ian Monroe, Simon Patterson, Gary Power, Rob Reed, Adam Ross, Keisuke Shirota, Mohamed Sherif, Kathy Temin, Benjamin Costo Westoby, Paul Winstanley

I will be showcasing four prints from my series  A Sense of Place

Exhibition Dates:
17th October - 31st December 2024

Location:
The Place Downstairs
11 Canonbury Place
London N1 2NQ

ABBF at Peckham 24

Eva Bachmann

I am very happy to participate with a stall showcasing my photo books, concertina books, tunnel books and zines at this year’s ABBF (A Bigger Book Fair) at Peckham 24.

Friday, the 17th Launch Night:  6 - 10 pm. (open to public)
Open on Saturday 18th & Sunday 19th between 11 am - 6 pm. 

Address:
Unit 8, Copeland Park, 133 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN. 

More info: Peckham 24

MFA installation

Eva Bachmann

The exhibition centres around the universal idea of home, migration and transcultural identity by looking at architecture, language and personal collections. It comprises a concertina book Haus (Altenfurt), a sound piece Doppelgänger, Home, an immersive installation, a series of paintings called Colour-Coded /Tower Blocks and Mismatched (Wall Tiles II), a PVC print mounted on plywood.

The work evolved following my receipt of the Clare Winston Award in 2022, which provided me with the opportunity to travel with my sister to central European countries, which shaped my identity.

Slade School of Art: MFA Graduation Show 2023

Eva Bachmann

I am pleased to invite you to my MFA graduation show at the Slade School of Arts, UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT.

The private view is on Friday, 9th June from 6 – 9 pm.

I will be showing a lens-based installation, book art and paintings, that touch on cross-cultural identity, memories, sense of place & displacement, similarities and subtle changes found in language and architecture.

Colour-Coded, from the series tower blocks, 2023, Watercolour, 19 x 30 cm

Barbican Arts Trust: Squeeze - Homelands

Eva Bachmann

The group show Squeeze showcased the work of students from the final year of MA/MFA Fine Art Media at the Slade.

The tunnel book Homelands made of eleven individual photographic panels represents locations from different countries that I once called my home. With its three-dimensional quality, the book simulates multiple interpretations of my cross-cultural identity.

Although each panel represents a different place, overall, they create one image –of what I called home.

Slade School of Art: Interim Show 2022 - How To Fit In

Eva Bachmann

The show will be open to the public:

Thursday 6 October - Tuesday 11 October 2022

weekdays 9:30am - 8:30pm, weekends 9:30am – 6:30pm

Slade School of Fine Art UCL, Gower Street London WC1E 6BT

more info here: Slade Interim Show 2022

The installation How to Fit In, comprised of photography, household objects and a pencil writing of wrongly interpreted proverbs, is a tongue-in-cheek commentary from an outsider’s perspective on the awkward situations when ‘tangled up in rhetorical footwork’. The deadpan images of resourceful yet not-so-successful repair hacks serve as a visual analogy to language slippages and cultural dilemmas when trying to fit in.

The installation developed as a progression of attempting to express concepts of displacement. Here, I compared the haphazard structures of improvised repair jobs with the clumsy mistakes of an outsider who is trying to belong by making use of local proverbs and getting them almost yet not quite right.

The selection of wrongly interpreted proverbs was based on mistakes I previously made or observed by other non-English speakers. For example:
‘Nearly is not good enough’, instead of ‘Almost is not good enough’, or ‘It’s not rock science’ instead of ‘It’s not rocket science’.
I used a pencil to write the proverbs on the wall to signify the temporality of language, as it is constantly evolving and changing. Just as the pencil can be erased, the language can be also corrected. Additionally, the pencil is also the preferred writing tool on the construction site for marking out various building processes.

Slade & Digital Anthropology Exhibition: 52%25%20 Spiritual - Cycling Flaneuse

Eva Bachmann

52%25%20 Spiritual is an online exhibition of work arising from collaboration between staff and students at the Slade School of Fine Art and Digital Anthropology, UCL.
It arose from discussions between Patrick White (Slade) and the creators of the Museum of Data: Tone Walford, Haidy Geismar (both UCL Anthropology), and Joel Gethin Lewis (CCI @ UAL Camberwell), with thanks also to Jane Davies and Alex Krook (UCL Digital Anthropology MSc).

Participants: Alex Krook, Bindu Mehra, Eva Bachmann, Eva Popovic, Funa Ye, Haidy Geismar, Ilona Balaga, Jane Davies, Jesse Giordano, Julian Kowal, Kate Davis, Kate Rogers, Pauline Lemaire, Sana Iqbal, Shi Yun Teo, Tone Walford.

Site was designed by Funa Ye
Exhibition link: 52%25%20 Spiritual

The Cycling Flaneuse video unites Bachmann’s visual and sound documentation of the urban landscape and Lemaire’s use of digital tools to recreate the digital exploration of London. For this project, Bachmann focussed on her cycling route to university and depicted ten landmarks that she photographed and sound recorded ten times. There are two versions: the first one includes all 100 photos and 100 recordings, and the second one is an 'audio-visual patchwork', where Lemaire picked her preferred three pictures and sound recordings and assembled them into this video, which meshes the gaze of both Bachmann and Lemaire cast on the city.

Lemaire has worked already on the subjectivity of itineraries and how they each represent some form of portrait of a neighbourhood, or a space. By recording the image and sound, Bachmann creates a relationship with each landmark, as it becomes something more than an incidental milestone on her commute.

Repetition plays a considerable part in Bachmann’s work processes. Here, she tends to reflect on her fixation to return to the same place time and again and record the subtle differences that occurred in the meantime. By doing so, she noticed how the sound of a particular landmark added an extra layer to the authenticity of the place. The act of stopping and consciously taking time to listen to a place transcended the mundane commuting into a mindful act. Even though the sound is fleeting, after stopping at a landmark on more occasions, she started to associate the specific sound with the characteristics of that place.
Eva Bachmann & Pauline Lemaire

Wordling: Lambing Season - In-Between

Eva Bachmann

The group show Lambing Season showcased work from students currently studying in their first year MFA Media at the Slade.
Curated by Frederika Dalwood and Isabelle Pead.

In the work In-Between, I used the slightly awkward places of the built environment as a visual analogy to compare the feeling of displacement, or to the slippages that occur when switching between different languages.

UCL Art Gallery: Spineless Wonders - Plain

Eva Bachmann

The Small Press Project invites you to SPIIIIINELESS , an exhibition of bookworks made by Slade students and staff.

I contributed with my self-published book Plain.

Plain, self-published book, 30 x 30 cm, linen cover 2020

Initiated in 2015 by Printmaking and Photography staff at the Slade School of Fine Art and the UCL Art Librarian, the Small Press Project utilises printed matter from the UCL Special Collections Small Press Collections - one of the most significant collections of independently published magazines, newspapers and pamphlets in the world.

Many of these works reflect the social, political and cultural context of printing and publishing dating from the mid 19th Century to the present day and exhibit the shifts in print culture as well as the evolution and development of the artist’s book as a method of making. Each year the project produces a collaborative publication responding to changing themes selected by students and staff.

This year the project was part of the Spineless Wonders programme, a 3-day series of events held throughout the academic year 2021/22 presenting research on small press publications, raising questions for contemporary and future works through returning to early histories of word and image.

SPIIIIIINELESS WONDERS

Phtotofusion: Salon 2021- A Slither of a Lockdown Sky

Eva Bachmann

“SALON/21 is our annual member’s show at Photofusion and to celebrate our 30th anniversary, we’ve decided to make it extra special this year. We’ve got Emma Bowkett and Zelda Cheatle as our selectors, as well as, Gina Glover and Geof Rayner selecting the winners of the first Glover Rayner prize. The last year has been difficult for us all in so many different ways but we want to put that past us, celebrate our members and the work made throughout the pandemic.”

A Slither from the Lockdown Sky 2020, 22 x 8

In 2020, a few days into the first lockdown, I started to photograph my window view, the sky and the rooftop of the building across the road. Every day, I followed the same frame and soon this repetitive process became part of my daily routine. I noticed how the recurrence of the seemingly monotonous view resonated with my distorted perception of time.
In this digital photo montage, the skies were added chronologically, each day representing one slither. I cropped each image, ending up with merely a slither of a sky. Each of the three UK lockdowns that occurred between March 2020 and May 2021 is represented with two collages.

By arranging the skies next to each other, a seemingly random patchwork of various hues of blues, browns, greys and pinks emerges. It resonates with the notion that although on the surface, life may appear dreary, it is constantly changing, even if ever so subtly.
Even though these skies depict my personal view, nevertheless, I am hoping that the work may resonate on a larger scale, representing the passing of time, a message of hope, reminding us of life’s continuity and its perpetual change.

My Window View: One Photo a Day

Eva Bachmann
31 Days 1st April - 1st May 2020, 31 frames

31 Days 1st April - 1st May 2020, 31 frames

31 Days 1st April - 1st May 2020, 31 frames

31 Days 1st April - 1st May 2020, 31 frames

Since the lockdown, the window took on a symbolic role in our collective experience. Isolated, people started to use the window as a means to communicate with the outside world, being it by singing, drawing a rainbow of hope, cheering and clapping the key workers, or simply looking out.

A few days into the isolation, I started to photograph my window view, a cherry tree about to blossom and a row of terraced houses across the road. Every day, I followed the same frame and soon this repetitive process became part of my daily routine.

I noticed, how the recurrence of the seemingly monotonous view resonates with my distorted perception of time. Time is a strange concept; for me, it seems as though we had never so much of it, yet at the same time, it appears to pass so much faster.
This project is about a message of hope, reminding us of life’s continuity, and its perpetual change.

31 Days 1st April - 1st May 2020, 43 frames

31 Days 1st April - 1st May 2020, 43 frames