David Spero’s photographic series Settlements offers a quietly powerful glimpse into alternative ways of living, documenting off-grid communities across the UK.
These communities, including Steward Community Woodland on the edge of Dartmoor and Tinkers Bubble in rural Somerset, embody a radical rethinking of sustainability; not as a slogan, but as lived practice. Taken between 2004 and 2015, the photographs document the communities’ development and transformation, captured through images of their homes, infrastructure and community life.
Through Spero’s lens, we are invited into a visionary world where dwellings are hand-built from recycled materials and where fruit and vegetables are grown a few steps from the kitchen table. In a time defined by mass-consumer culture, increasing technological dependence, and environmental uncertainty, Settlements invites us to reflect on what sustainable living truly means and what changes we might embrace to move closer to it.
ARTIST
David Spero is a British photographer, born in 1963, whose interconnected, contemplative photographic projects offer quiet and nuanced enquiries into the world around us. Spero graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1993 and his work has been exhibited widely, including at Tate Britain and The Photographers Gallery in London as well as the Northern Photography Centre, Finland. His work is also in numerous collections, including those of the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Council.
CURATOR
Helena David is a British contemporary art curator, based in Shropshire. She holds a BA in Art History and is completing her MA in Curation at the University of Exeter. In this exhibition, Helena brings together the tranquillity of David Spero’s Settlements with the contrast of an environment shaped by consumerism to explore the intersection between green utopias and their fragmented and commodified counterpart.
