📸 SUBMISSIONS OPEN NOW 📸

Staged is a photography exhibition that focuses on the constructed, the orchestrated, the deliberately performed image: picture-making rather than picture-taking. This might look like a surreal intervention, a choreographed gesture, tableau photography; anything that uses staging as a way to visualise ideas, express identity, or even simply shift the focus to the act of making an image.

This exhibition resists the blur that is seen everywhere these days between the real and the performed, by making it clear and intentional. We’re looking for photographers and artists who use staging not as deception but as a creative strategy, a genre. It can involve building a set, directing a gesture, or creating a scene that feels realistic, fictional, or completely surreal – as long as the photo is taken with intention rather than spontaneity.

The exhibition is curated by SFG team member, Noa Ferder, a performance artist working at the intersection of visual and live art. In her work, she experiments with how the still image can hold the tension of a performed moment, and carry liveness through composition, gesture, and construction. STAGED invites artists and photographers into this exploration, looking at photography as a site of performance where the still is activated.

Email us the work you’d like to submit, and tell us a bit about yourself and your practice. As always, submissions are open to both established and emerging artists.

Submission deadline: Thursday 29th January
Maximum works per artist: 3
Submission Fee: £10 per work
Drop off dates: 3rd + 5th + 6th February
Exhibition dates: 10th-24th February
Opening night: Tuesday 10th February, 7-9pm

As always, we must be mindful of our environment in the Pentagon Centre and as such we cannot display any blatant profanity, graphic imagery, or nudity.

STAGED Moodboard & Examples