MARGATE.- Turner Contemporary presents an exhibition of photographic works in its ground floor space by British artist and curator, Andrew Cross. This series of photographs, collectively known as Timacade (Somali for ‘white hair’), depict buildings in the Somalian capital Mogadishu, stripped back to their bare essentials, juxtaposed alongside images of the artist’s familiar Wiltshire landscape.

Visiting the African continent and a ‘zone of conflict’ in the summer of 2013 for the first time, Andrew Cross’ journey to Mogadishu was not born out of any sense of adventure, rather a simple bond of friendship with Somali born architect Rashid Ali.

The photographs exhibited at Turner Contemporary were made as part of Cross and Ali’s much larger collaborative project Mogadishu – Lost Moderns, exploring architectural legacies that have endured the upheaval of the city’s recent past. Featured in particular is the concrete shell of the National Assembly Building, built in the late 1960s as a symbol of Somalia’s break from its colonial past and its future as a modern independent country.

Alongside these images of Mogadishu, Andrew Cross offers by contrast, a selection of images that offer a glimpse into places of personal certainty, including the Wiltshire landscape his father used to farm and his late mother’s garden. However challenging travel may be, Andrew Cross is struck not only by the differences to his usual experience, but also by the similarities. Cross often finds unexpected equivalents to these familiar places on his journeys and notices how familiar landscapes change each time he returns.

These contrasting images of Somalia and Wiltshire offer both the artist and the audience “an opportunity to reflect upon the place [they] have left as much as the place to where [they] are going.”

Mogadishu – Lost Moderns was commissioned by, and is shown courtesy of The Mosaic Rooms/ A.M. Qattan Foundation.