Agency

Agency is a new body of work by the socially engaged artist Anthony Luvera. Created in collaboration with people who have experienced homelessness in Coventry, this commission for Coventry UK City of Culture extends the artist's practice-based research made with people experiencing homelessness in towns and cities across the United Kingdom over the past twenty years. 

Throughout 2021, Luvera invited participants to use disposable cameras to document their experiences and places in the city that are significant to them. Participants were also invited to use digital medium format camera equipment in order to work on the production of a self-portrait for the artist’s ongoing series Assisted Self-Portraits. The final images were premiered in an exhibition in the public realm along Warwick Row, a road containing many estate agents that leads into the city centre from Coventry Train Station, from the 8th to the 28th of October 2021, part of the HOME: Arts and Homelessness Festival for Coventry UK City of Culture. The exhibition was accompanied by a community newspaper which was distributed freely across the city throughout the duration of the City of Culture festival.

From the 2nd to the 28th of September 2022, Agency was presented at Landskrona Foto, an international photography festival held annually in Landskrona, Sweden. The work was featured in a group exhibition entitled 'Spreads', curated by Jenny Lindhe, alongside work by notable artists including Rafal Milach (Poland), Gloria Oyarzabal (Spain), Marta Bogdanska (Poland), Satoshi Tsuchiyama (Japan), Rodrigo Orrantia (UK), Crystal Bennes (Scotland), and Blackbook Publications (Sweden). As part of the festival’s talks programme, on Sunday the 4th of September, Anthony was in conversation with sociologist Christopher Mathieu (Lund University) in a public event which was also live-streamed on Facebook.

Agency was then featured as a keynote exhibition at the Oslo Negativ photography festival in Oslo, Norway, presented by Fotogalleri Vasli Souza, from the 23rd of September to the 16th of October. The exhibition took place in the public realm in Oslo city centre and in a main gallery space inside Det Gamle Biblioteket.