Simon Webb writing in Art Review "Proving that old subjects die hard, Birmingham-based photographers John Hodgett and Clare Smith have used deceptively simple means to explore the very familiar subject of landscape.Coming loosely from different but complementary ends of the same lens, it's an impressive show. Smith's expansive photographs convey the vastness and awe of open space, layered in a way that refers (though refreshingly not in an ironic, knowing way) to romantic painting and the sublime. In them, the viewer is drawn through veils of mist into an intangible space of beauty while remaining thoroughly empty, devoid of people, places. and, ultimately, meaning. In contrast, Hodgett's work displays an obsession with the close-up, with the minute detail of the surface of the land. Working directly with a scanner and laptop, these shallow and intensly detailed images are hyperreal epitaphs to the landscape, becoming more engaging the longer you look at them. The artists' use of landscape harks back to the days when meaning in art was dependent on subject rather than context, with its attendant suggestions of artist as visionary, a mythic producer of individual and authentic images.The reproducible medium of photography is obviously at odds with this idea and the work here does play with this to some extent: the painterly imagery and seductive surfaces belie the medium of their creation. It's a welcome slant on tradition, the images remaining effortlessly simple in presentation and execution but also managing to contain a subtle complexity of ideas and emotions."
	Clare Smith and John Hodgett