Showcase: Tine Bek

Often working with a small handheld analogue point and shoot, much of Tine Bek's work comes from a constant scanning of her environment, a relentless evaluative sensitivity to her immediate surroundings.

Out of this prolific approach came a need to impose some order on the huge mass of proof sheets from images taken across South America, Denmark and Glasgow – so Bek began to cut them up and order her images by colour.

Colour is one of the biggest draws – for her – in her photographic practice which is founded upon, as she puts it, 'looking, looking, looking, looking.' More generally, Bek considers her practice as an investigation into sophistication and class. There is frequently an attention to interior decors, combined with a richness that at times becomes baroque. A visual richness also recurs through Bek's recurring interest in photographing food, crafting still life compositions that flirt with an attraction to excess.

With her enquiries into class and sophistication, through an examination of the settings in which we place our selves, Bek also enquires into how individuals respond to these habitats and objects. More specifically, she tries to expose the man-made constraints that we put on, not just ourselves as individuals but also our artefacts and objects of the everyday. One term that she finds useful is 'taming,' how an urge to keep order and control is expressed at the level of the individual as well as wider society.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the weight that is perceptible in much on Bek's work. An otherwise innocuous orange may become 'forbidden fruit.' For Bek, the images tell a story of something unfulfilled, suppressed and held down. Out of the everyday comes, 'the fall.' Even on the back of man's white shirt or a dark green plant are inscribed the grandest narratives.

Tine Bek graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and currently lives and works in Glasgow.