Archives 1992 ()

22 December 1992 - 16 January 1993

Photographers: Uldis Briedis, Andrejs Grants, Gvido Kajons, Valts Kleins, Aivars Liepins, Inta Ruka and Martins Zelmenis

15 October - 14 November 1992

“I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see. Like a series of liquid transparencies one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Margaret Atwood, “Cat’s Eye”

“Is memory something we have or is it something we have lost”

Woody Allan, “Another Woman”

April Hickox’s recent work explores new strategies of production. She constructs her work around “stories”, which are the fragments of memories from her own life, lived. She id influenced by the narrative structurations of both literature and film; the pauses and rhythms, the sounds and silences. Her new body of work finds Hickox leaning over Atwood’s waters of time, gazing intently.

17 September - 10 October 1992

Artist Statement 1990/91

As I walk to the model’s stand I take in the atmosphere of the classroom, more physically than with thought, I try to assess the attitudes of the students and instructor. I step onto the platform, circling, I search for the spot where I will stand to hold my first pose. With unconscious and accustomed actions I disrobe, like those before me who have done this for centuries. In this first moment of unveiling I simultaneously retreat inward and propel outward a sense of presence. This state is a “caught in the middle” feeling which causes something of an out of the body sensation. Shielding my nudity. I sense the invisible threads of scrutinizing thoughts, pushing and pulling my body with brush, charcoal and clay: seduced into line , texture and form. Yet I remain seemingly untouched and untouchable, my silence contributing to this process of art-making. An artist’s model, a cultural stripper.
In 1975 I did my first nude modeling job. At this time I was 18 and convinced that the only real reason nudes were used was to  lure students to art schools. I’m now 34, still modeling and still unconvinced…
I started practicing art while modeling part-time. In 1985 I combined both professions by using myself as the model in my own work. With years of modeling I had to come to terms with a sort of  public nudity and as my own model I now had control in presenting my body. The process became self- contained and left me free to translate and play with intent and idea directly with the camera uninhibited by another’s presence. Being both artist and model solved the unsettling issues of objectification and misuse. I could now displace these views by using my own body instead of someone else’s.
Modeling is not an easy job on either the body or the psyche. Yet it has given me hours of reflection on the relationship between artist and model, art practices, and a chance to study and experience western attitudes towards the female nude. Many of the situations I’ve been in as a model have run the gamut of human emotion, from humourous and ironic to infuriating and embarrassing.
Some years ago I became interested in my historical counter parts. Everytime I disrobed I had the sensation of this very same action having been done for centuries; in doing this I become aligned with all the female subjects of the old masters. It is with this perspective that I started my series on the nude.

18 August - 12 September 1992

21 July - 18 August 1992

(Conversations avec l’invisible)

23 June - 18 July 1992

The photographs that comprise, “Learning to  be a Pilgrim”, explore the ritualistic nature of tourism. While investigating tourist sites within Montreal and Quebec City, I became interested in religious locales which also serve as sites of tourism, I became cognizant of an analogue between the venerable journey of pilgrims and the events surrounding contemporary tourism.
While primitive societies made pilgrimages in search of the sacred, modern tourists make quests in search of authentic experience. “Learning to be a Pilgrim” speaks  of this ceremonial journey. Religious site and tourist locale converge to illuminate our struggle to make sense of self and world within a highly differentiated culture.
The images in, “Learning to be a Pilgrim”, are derived from super 8 movie film. The work was produced with the aid of a grant from the Ministere des Affaires culturelles, Quebec.

19 May - 20 June 1992

SASKATCHEWAN PIONEER WOMEN

“She openth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness” Proverbs 31:26

This exhibition portrays, through photographs, script and an audio component, the lives and contributions of a few pioneer women of Saskatchewan, all of whom are over 85 years of age. These pioneer women experienced unbelievable hardships during the early days of building this country.
I wish to honour these “ordinary women” of Saskatchewan who carried much of the responsibility for the day-to-day survival of the family and the building of a strong country but stayed in the background while the men received most of the credit.
Today these pioneers are often regarded as unimportant and separated from our society, with knowledge which is out of date and interests irrelevant to what is happening now. I find the opposite to be true. They are knowledgeable and up to date on current affairs, make intelligent comments regarding today’s problems and are still capable of making a real contribution to today’s society.
As a volunteer story reader at the Lutheran Sunset Home in Saskatoon during the past eight years, I have come to know several of the women featured in this exhibition. I was especially interested in bringing up their own children and, finally, whether they feel fulfilled in their own lives.
As I got to know them, I admired their qualities of love, kindness and unselfishness and their commitment to a way of life that they thought important. Knowing them and listening to their stories has strengthened my belief in my own values.
-Thelma Pepper

21 April - 16 May 1992

24 March - 18 April 1992

I use photography not only as a means of representing, imitating and transforming reality, but also as a lure and a subjective medium which only appears to reproduce its object. It reflects the annihilation, the inner tensions and the intimacy of human beings and can also integrate different visual sources, such as painting and media images. Caught in its own web of paradoxes, photography induces a dialectical movement between perceived reality and fiction. It plays with time and proportion, brings together ultra-precisionnism and disintegration, raw materials and contrived imagery, fragmentation and continuity, confounding the effective flatness of its substance with the virtual, one would say illusory, tri-dimensionnality of its appearance.
Explorations of the special relations between seemingly antagonistic photographic propositions led me to combine - by adjunction, opposition or superimposition - composite images i.e., disordered photo-cathodic mosaics, with un-manipulated magnified shots of natural elements, or representations of obsolete industrial objects. This intricate mixture of proposals forms a syncretic rebus, in which the violet coloration and the cross-bredding of the photographic assemblies raise doubts as to the pureness and the simplicity of the visual memories and natural materials marked by the passage of time, depicted in the large black and white prints. The mimetic function of the medium is thus challenged again by these visual paradoxes which bring together the documentary intention of photography and the possible dissolution of any historical truth, the gradual disappearance of the distinction between Myth and History.

-Andre Clement

18 February - 21 March 1992

Artists: Emse Boone, Sarah Crawley, Diane Felske, Lita Fontaine-Janzen, Angela Freeth, David Grymnski, Vildan Karamanoglou, Mari Kilimnik, Christine Kirouac, Heba Latif, Lorraine McDonald, J.J. Manders, David Nightingale, Duane Payment and Anita Starzecki

Collected Works is an eclectic assemblage of photographs by new artists. Though these artists encompass a vast range of interests, backgrounds, passions and concerns, they are each poised at a moment of looking — again.
Each of these artists has been encoded by the world around them. Each of them has been told at some point what things “look like.” Some have discovered the power of a photograph to question these notions, to problematize the act of looking. What intrigues me about the work in this show is the impulse of each artist to photograph certain subjects over others, and the treatment these subjects are given. Themes begin to assert themselves, when the work is hung together.
For example, family remains a consistent subject for both amateur and advanced photographers, hobbyists and artists alike. David Grywinski, Lorraine McDonald and Angela Freeth have represented family in a way that speaks of photography’s traditional function as memento. Artists such as Sarah Crawley and Christine Kirouac rupture the fiction of the ideal nuclear family.
Another function of photography has been to document place. The history of photography has been loaded with claims of objectivity. Photographs were thought to accurately represent empirical reality. However, recent photographic theory has emphasized the subjective element in photography: the photographer selecting the subject, framing the image and manipulating, even distorting the print.
J.J. Manders had chosen a traditional approach to documenting the natural environment. Mari Kilimnik, Duane Payment and Esme Boone offer images which suggest different physical sites, while fore-grounding their status as made photographs. The same emphasis on subjective distortion is found in Vildan Karamanglou’s work, though its subject matter differs.
Contemporary photographic and communications theory has also emphasized the gaze, how our perceptions of reality are influenced by the images with which we come into contact. Historically, patriarchal ideology has perpetuated itself by re-presenting its own version of reality. It has controlled images. their production and reception, in order to maintain power. By definition the patriarchal gaze has objectified the “Other”.
Patriarchy insists that those versions of reality which it cannot subsume must remain outside, marginalized and silenced. These outsiders include cultural minorities such as Aboriginal peoples, non-Euro-American peoples, women and homosexuals. Lita Fontaine-Janzen, Heba Latif and Diane Felske all real-ize the importance of subverting the patriarchal gaze, of drawing the “Other” in.
Like painting, photography has a tradition of still life imagery. Often, this genre explores formalistic concerns. David Nightingale’s (almost) still life is a classic play of form and light. Anita Starzecki pulls unconventional objects into her frame which generate both metaphor and visual richness.
Collected Works is based on an inclusionary model. The exhibition was originally presented as an opportunity for new photographers to participate and show their work in a parallel gallery context. Collected Works is more about the process of editing, submitting, preparing and mounting works for exhibition, than it is about “final” product.
Collected Works incorporates both traditional imagery and bold experimentation. Positioned side by side, the images speak to each other. You are invited to listen. -Lisa Mark