I am excited to share that I will be exhibiting my works in two gallery spaces this September – Si(gh)t[e] Lines in Gallery 44’s Production Gallery (for members), and The Landscape Is Dead at Wyndham Arts 3rd Floor Gallery (with Anna Gaby-Trotz).
Si(gh)t[e] Lines is a group exhibition of photographs by artists Peggy Taylor Reid, Richelle Forsey, Carolyn Cheng, and Ariyo. Along the wall of the Gallery 44 Production Gallery space, the artists’ individual bodies of works are presented as a collective narrative through their shared concerns for the Earth’s ecology, explored using different approaches and techniques with photography. On the contemporary role of photography in society, essayist Susan Sontag wrote in 1973, “To photograph is to confer importance.” The exhibition Si(gh)t[e] Lines accords this idea of value to the contemporary landscape seen through photographs by four artists converging processes, witnessing, and looking to explore the social urgency of ecological imbalances.
My images in this exhibition are from my current series in-progress Desire Lines that examines human activity and our impact(s) on the land at the intersection of the sublime landscape and the urban/built environment – where nature meets the interests of capitalism and consumption.
Opening Reception: Thursday Sept. 12, 6-8p.m., Gallery 44, 401 Richmond St, Toronto ON.
Can you (we) save the world by looking?
The idea of wilderness – land uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings – raises questions about how much truly natural land is left in a world that values the production of goods over people and the land. Through collage and digital montage of our photographs of agriculture, land-management, resource extraction sites, utilities infrastructure, the aftermath of forest fires, icebergs, development sites, refuse, development, and destruction, we open up our individual practices to collective thought and authorship through creative play and collaboration used to create this new body of work.
The language of hope and despair is woven into this work through screen printed text and images. The camera is a tool of agency and the collaborative process a de-centering of individual artist authorship to prioritize our explorations and the invitation for slow looking.
In Wyndham Arts 3rd Floor Gallery, “The Landscape is Dead” reflects the intersection of the landscape and the built environment for contemplation, to illuminate the complex and troubling questions about human impacts on the natural world.
– Anna Gaby-Trotz & Richelle Forsey
Opening Reception: Saturday Sept. 14, 2-5p.m., Wyndham Arts 3rd Floor Gallery, 125 Wyndham St. N, Guelph, ON
I am grateful to the Ontario Arts Council& Government of Ontario for their support of my project Desire Lines.
