Mark Neville - Parade: Parade

Feuteu is delighted to present the first online exhibition of Mark Neville’s Parade since it was featured as one of the five finalists of the prestigous Deutsche Borse Prize held at The Photographers Gallery, London.

The genesis of Parade, lay on the day in 2016 that Britain voted to leave the European Union. It was then that, coincidentally, Neville began work on a project Commissioned by the Centre d’Art GwinZegal, based in Guingamp, Brittany (‘little Britain’), France.

Over a three-year period, Neville created a multi-faceted portrait of this provincial agricultural region. Exhibiting the work at the local football stadium, the farming community - which constitutes the primary demographic of the team’s supporters - became both the subject of, and the principal audience for his project.

Blurring lines between constructed and documentary imagery, Neville photographed different agribusinesses - from small holdings, with only a handful of animals, through to larger industries. 

Will Self has said about Parade “Mark Neville’s photographic essay is … about the myriad unreflective moments, when, stood before the lens, his subjects feel themselves – which is to be poised between action and inaction, solitude and comity, the unravelled past and the unwoven future – to our universal one, which is to be particular to this community or that.”

The resulting photographs were brought together in photo book, now accompanied by a publication of essays by Brittany farmers about the need for a sustainable, humane, even ecotopian type of agriculture. Both publications were sent out free, as a call to action, to UK and European ministries of agriculture and food, key policy makers, and rural and urban schools and libraries.