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Kingsgate Project Space hosts: PenKnife

Jennifer Forward-Hayter

19 January - 4 February 2024

PenKnife is an MA Photo Degree Show by Jennifer Forward-Hayter. It documents Jennifer's wild adventures with the most senior and most provocative journalists, from Frontline to Podcast studio.

Journalists are not of ‘our’ world — they are destabilising figures... Larrikins. If you spend too long in their presence, you may find yourself explored, exposed, anxious and challenged.

On wild adventures, operating in a morally grey zone, journalists are excused from shame. They ask the questions we wish we could, in order to serve as record-keeper, watchdog, and entertainer: They make the private uncomfortably public.

In a continual news cycle, we send these Larrikins into fires - severe legal battles, physical and online violence, and receding budgets. When the Larrikin is such a grotesque character, and the news is so juicy, there is little incentive to stop them from being burnt.

We listen to their reports with a dramatic irony. These are the lifestyles of contemporary journalists and the conditions in which they work as victims and antagonists, madmen and Saints.

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