Tall Tales seeks to record the embellished truths and myths of the British public.
Following in the traditions of Cecil Sharp and Alan Lomax, Matt Rowe trawled local public houses and social clubs, collecting a series of field recordings, documentary images and texts. The resulting Tall Tales archive presents a loose form of social reportage, celebrating localism and exaggerated truths.
Tall Tales opens a line of enquiry in which artistic translations of these stories are cultivated, a process where myth building, sculptural props and costumes are assimilated into a series of photographic images, suggestive of a ‘Mystic Landscape’.
The characters, structures and rituals that frequent these images are symptomatic of a fermentation that occurs, when elements of fragmented narratives and day dreaming intertwine.