Lesley Bricknell | image made in response to 'Sister of swans', 2010
I have recently made a collaborative piece of work with another artist entirely through the medium of our respective blogs with no face to face contact! I have long admired Marion Michell’s combination of poetry and objects, often knitted or crocheted, on her blog ‘my art grows around me’. She in turn admires my work, predominantly photo images, on my blog ‘Surfacing’ Art Journal.
I took as my inspiration one of this particular artist’s poems ‘Sister of swans’ and made five photo images in a loose visual interpretation of her writing. Marion’s response to this was extremely positive prompting her to respond to my piece of visual work. Whether this is visual, written or a combination of practices remains to be seen. In what I hope will be an ongoing, fruitful collaboration. And we have never met each other!
I am starting to work with feathers again inspired by the phrase ‘broken wing’. A phrase mentioned to me by fellow blogger Marion. Feathers feature in my work from time to time. I am currently working on a sequence of moving images (not yet ready at time of posting). The imagesmade to date, however, are visceral, arresting. Broken, useless. A mixture of red photo dye, nail varnish and wax. Collected and retrieved from pillows, eiderdowns, coastal walks. A loose continuation of my work ‘Cardinal’ at Poplar Gallery.Online last year.
Kate MccGwire ‘Vex’ (2008)
Nothing of my own activities. surpasses the collecting abilities of artist Kate MccGwire. I saw her piece ‘Vex’ (2008) in the City Museum, Plymouth (UK) last year and was completely knocked out by it. Composed of feathers from racing pigeons, each one is numbered, and looks constrained (but great!) within the classical museum cabinet. Other pieces use pigeon feathers, glue, polystyrene, felt. Sensational!
Pink Princess, 2009 Stoneware with under glaze 34 1/2" x 18" x 18"
James Harris Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Akio Takamori. The artist has been a seminal figure working in ceramics for more than twenty five years. Takamori’s sculpture has always been figurative, based on the human body and expressive of human emotion and sensuality. The show will consist of twelve small scale porcelain figures paired with an accompanying photograph and five large scale stoneware figures. The porcelain works were conceived during a residency at the International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark. Upon his return from Northern Europe, the artist created the stoneware pieces in his Seattle studio. The exhibition explores both contemporary and Renaissance portraiture as a psychological crossroads between past and present.
Read a review of the exhibition by SLOG’s Jen Graves HERE.
Tenderpixel is pleased to present Eric Ayotte and Etan Ilfeld’s first collaboration, Breaking Point, which explores the meta and microcosmic synthesis of computer-creativity, mathematics, optics, art history and painting. Breaking Point relates to riots, tear gas and general societal conflicts within a landscape: At any given point in society when equality or injustice reaches a certain point there is a universal language or action that occurs. READ MORE…
The Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition of work by Scott Conarroe. This new series, “By Rail”, is a set of large format colour photographs that document the North American railway system.
Fifty years since O. Winston Link’s “Norfolk and Western Project” and well over a century since railway companies commissioned photographers like A.J. Russell to produce expansive portrayals of their exciting new technology, Conarroe examines the North American rail system, to determine whether it really has outlived its usefulness, and its relevance in our culture. Articulating the critical role trains played in continental economic and social development, Conarroe’s understated vision uses long exposures to record a blend of natural light that occurs during dawn and dusk, providing a phenomenal platform for viewers to consider the profound impact railways have had on our lives. His pictures of this sprawling socio-geographical network are a remarkable testament to its past glory and future potential. Largely empty of trains or people, these contemplative, elegiac images evoke a range of responses to what is arguably the defining technology of the modern nation state. The tracks function as a unifying device, they animate the landscape with history and myth, and they are structures of beauty in their own right. While this series is laden with historical connotations, the images are a product of our current industrial state, an era when the ethics and logistics of land-use, travel, and the structures of community are being reconsidered.
Conarroe received a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2001 and an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2005. He is increasingly well known for his social landscapes of familiar places, which evoke romantic pictorial traditions. His photographs of empty hockey rinks, town squares, back alleys and looming bridges and underpasses have been exhibited internationally. He has lectured throughout North America and was recently a visiting instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2008, he won Blackflash Magazine’s “Best Still Image” prize and was awarded the Light Work residency and the Chalmers Fellowship. His work can be found in the prominent collections of the Bank of Montreal, Toronto; Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor; Mount Saint Vincent’s University Art Gallery, Halifax; Kitchener / Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener; Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa; amongst many others.
“By Rail” was made possible with a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and received assistance from the Ontario Arts Council and Light Work. A more expansive version of this series along with a catalog curated by James Patten launches at the Art Gallery of Windsor in October.
By Rail
Exhibition Dates: July 23 – September 12, 2009
Reception for the Artist: Thursday, July 23, 5 – 8pm
Image of the Maple Creek cast for Macbeth around 1920. (CLICK image for larger version) This was the time when the town’s logo was “Not a Boomtown”… submitted by Adrienne Gradauer
Richard Ansett Solo Exhibition, March 27 to April 22
Tenderpixel Gallery is pleased to welcome back photographer Richard Ansett for a solo exhibition. Ansett’s work investigates how identities are formed and projected while interacting within social, cultural, economic and symbolic feedback circuits. Ansett re-works contemporary constructs of portraiture by shedding light on the boundaries of normative behavior, intimacy and self-expression.
Ansett’s images represent a moment in time as opposed to an instant of truth; what Ansett offers the viewer is a poignant moment of self-referential reflection. These photographs are complex manifestations, purposefully ambiguous and difficult to de-code. The artist’s work is not a form of social realism, nor is it documentary. Whilst there is obvious complicity, it is not collaboration; Ansett proposes an exploration of the subject free from the expectation to represent them in a flattering light.
Richard Ansett is a British photographer living and working in London. His work has been collected by the Smithsonian Institute, the National Portrait Gallery Permanent Collection, and The National Portrait Gallery of Canada.
You are invited to view Cardinal: photographs inspired by textile practice an exhibition of new work by UK artist Lesley Bricknell on Poplar Gallery.Online (formerly Poplar ArtCraft). Bricknell stains, marks and manipulates reclaimed garments creating photographs that are at once haunting and starkly beautiful.
poplar: two years, a retrospective exhibition featuring work exhibited over the last two years on Poplar ArtCraft continues until April 18, 2009.
Poplar Gallery.Online
CARE Canada
