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Indepth Arts News:
"The Found and the Familiar: Snapshots in Contemporary Canadian Art"
2004-01-14 until 2004-02-21
Bishop's University Art Gallery
Lennoxville, QC,
CA
The Art Gallery of Bishop’s University is proud to present The Found and the Familiar: Snapshots in Contemporary Canadian Art, curated by Sophie Hackett and Jennifer Long. This traveling exhibition is organized and circulated by Gallery TPW (Toronto Photographers Workshop). It showcases work by Sara Angelucci, Barbara Astman, Dean Baldwin, Chris Curreri, Nancy Friedland, Clint Griffin, Vid Ingelevics, Germaine Koh, Adrienne Lai and Nina Levitt.
We are all familiar with the snapshot, and indeed most of us possess countless examples of these personal visual records. The snapshot is omnipresent in everyday life and is a staple of how individuals experience and remember events. The Found and the Familiar stems from society’s strong interest in preserving tangible markers of its souvenirs, whether real or fictional: they document our lives as they are or as we want them to appear to be. These informal, evocative and nostalgic snapshots offer artists a rich terrain of possibilities.
To create their works the 10 featured artists have used photographs they have either borrowed or found. Through their creations they build on the visual codes of snapshots, as well as the events and personal moments they capture to explore such concepts as the impermanent and changeable nature of memory, the negation of the distorting effects of time and re-contextualisation, and the deconstruction and re-definition of identity. To sight a few examples: in her series the pity of lost things (2001-2002), Nancy Friedland has digitally isolated body parts from her class pictures. By highlighting what gets lost, she is relaying the imperfect nature of memory. Whereas, Adrienne Lai’s series Preserves (2001) examines this theme of the flawed nature of memory through a series of Mason jars filled with small stones onto which she has transferred fragments of snapshots. As the pickled stones grow mossy over time, the pictures become obscured, thus representing the memory becoming clouded. As for Sara Angelucci, her work Stillness (2002), explores her roots the juxtaposition of pictures of Italy belonging in her family’s archive and images from her recent trip. In these diptychs coexist her present and her past.
The Found and the Familiar aims to advance and deepen the public’s knowledge and appreciation of Contemporary Canadian photography. The exhibition acknowledges the power of the snapshot.
Curators: Sophie Hackett is a writer, independent curator and arts administrator. She holds a BFA in photography from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design. Her writing has been published in Lola, Saturday Night magazine, Xtra!, C magazine, Canadian Art and Prefix Photo.
Jennifer Long is a photographer and curator who studied photographic arts at Ryerson University. In November 2002, her most recent work, Doubt, is on exhibit at Luft Gallery in Toronto. She is the Education Coordinator at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography.
IMAGE
GERMAINE KOH
Sightings, 1992-98
Sample of postcard
Postcards and postcard stand
Individual dimensions: 10.16cm H x 15.24cm W
Installation dimensions: 172.72cm H x 25.4cm W x 25.4cm D
Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery
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