Hollywood Re-loaded at HOFA Gallery
'Hollywood Reloaded Brigitte Bardot' by Bran Symondson & Terry O'Neill, 2019
HOFA Gallery presents Terry O'Neill CBE and Bran Symondson, two hugely accomplished, and ground-breaking photographers from different eras, in a collaboration of a provocative new collection aptly called 'Hollywood Re-loaded', to be unveiled at Annabel’s, London, on 30 September 2019
Hollywood Re-loaded' is a bold and brash reinvention of Terry O'Neill's portraits of Hollywood icons posing with guns. Portraits of stars like Michael Caine, Brigitte Bardot and Roger Moore, each with sleek firearm in hand, are pockmarked by bullets fired by ex-Special Forces turned artist and reportage photographer, Bran Symondson, using the same gun as in each portrait. Guns and the violence they symbolize become subjects, displacing Hollywood stars and the glorified ethos they mediate as well as create.
Inspired by the changing perception of guns and the reverberating conversation about gun violence around the world, 'Hollywood Re-loaded' is a timely addition to both artists’ repertoires. Classic works by Terry O’Neill get a second life unlike their first as Bran Symondson bravely inhabits the space where being a photographer and a soldier meet. Both, he rightly observes, “…are looking intensely for the moment”.