The Or Gallery is pleased to present Principles & Deceptions, a solo exhibition by London-based artist Sarah Dobai.

Dobai’s practice is based in photography, film, publication and performance. Her work reflects on the central position of photography and cinema in relation to ongoing debates around realism, illusionism and authorship. Principles & Deceptions addresses the artist’s focus on copying, repetition, and theft through the presentation of her film Hidden in Plain Sight (2015) alongside a series of photographic excerpts from her bookwork The Overcoat (2015).

Hidden in Plain Sight, originally commissioned by L’Été Photographique de Lectoure in Toulouse, re-presents short excerpts from Robert Bresson’s film Pickpocket (1959). For The Overcoat, a bookwork published by Four Corners Press in London, Dobai contributes a series of photographs of commercial display windows and vitrines that are placed in conversation with Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 novella of the same name, in which the protagonist works as a copyist.

There will be a special performance at the opening reception, where the presentation of Dobai’s film work Hidden in Plain Sight will be accompanied by a live reading.

Dobai is currently collaborating with author Tom McCarthy on a new commission for the Whitstable Biennale. Recent exhibitions and screenings of her work have been presented at: L’Été Photographique de Lectoure, France; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Spike Island, Bristol; CCA Glasgow; Kamloops Art Gallery; Kuandu Museum of Fine Art, Taipei; FotoMuseum Antwerp; FotoMuseum Winterthur; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago di Compostella, Spain. Dobai completed an MFA at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art (University of the Arts, London).