What Are You Looking At?

Navigating the Visual Zeitgeist

What Are You Looking At? began with a simple proposition: to examine the forces shaping the visual landscape today. The project invited artists and curators to disclose the images they privately gather, return to, and allow to permeate their work — the visual material that lingers at the edges of practice yet rarely enters public view.

Participants were asked to submit three to six images that were informing their creative thinking at that moment. These could be anything from the everyday to the canonical: a tree seen from a studio window, a Renaissance painting, a still from a series watched late into the night, an internet meme, an overlooked fragment, or a fleeting digital glitch. Together, these contributions offered an intimate mapping of what haunts, inspires, or redirects the contemporary gaze.

What began as an exhibition has since taken on deeper form. Over the past two years, the project has been developed in collaboration with Plaintiff Press and expanded into a publication — a layered, collective portrait of how we navigate the ceaseless, shifting current of images in the present day.

The resulting volume brings together these visual constellations with accompanying reflections, presenting an ensemble study of influence, attention, and the quiet architectures of looking.

Curated by Marie Obegi. Exhibition hosted at Hobhouse Court, London, March-May 2024.

Hand bound, French-Link exposed stitched Velvet Hard Cover
Limited edition of 30.