David Westrop lives and works in Ottawa.  He uses photography to examine and comment on the world around us.  Even though his background is in more traditional photography he will use digital manipulation or incorporate other materials to arrive at his final work.

The photographs shown here are from a recent body of work on the cranes that are used at major construction sites, usually referred to as tower cranes.

More work can be seen at his website:   http://www.davidwestrop.com

Richard Palanuk is a visual artist living and working in Winnipeg. He attended the University of Winnipeg and studied photography at Red River College. Richard worked for the Province of Manitoba as a photographer and honed his skills in the darkroom, printing photographs for the Hudson Bay and the Provincial Archives. He went on to pursue a career as a freelance photographer, working with writers, editors, graphic designers and art directors. His particular interest in gardening images led him to assignments with Canadian Gardening magazine. Richard has since moved on to pursue his art on a full-time basis. His work has evolved from traditional photography to printmaking based on his photographic work. Richard’s experimental and playful approach has taken this medium to a new level. His work can be found in private collections worldwide and in corporate collections acquired by: Canadian Heritage, the Government of Canada, the Manitoba Liquor Commission, the Business Development Bank of Canada and The World Wildlife Fund.

Artist Statement
“I see my work as fiction based on fact and it all begins with my camera. I record images that somehow find me. Once I start playing with these visual impressions, they begin to take on a life of their own. It can be quite exhilarating to experience this transformation as the images become visual metaphors for inner thoughts and emotions.”

Richard Palanuk

Brad Proudlove is from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and works in documentary media.  Trained in live television broadcasting, documentary production, and print journalism, he has always been interested in capturing real-life situations and examining every small detail.  His video and photo works often document the abstract and fleeting nature of our environment by slowing down or freezing fragments of everyday life.

His more recent photos feature people frozen in a moment of action, but with faces obscured, to discourage emotional attachment through facial expression/recognition, and shift attention to the overall environment of that particular moment in time.

More Photos.

Colin Carney is an interdisciplinary artist located in Guelph Ontario. Carney acquired an Honours BA in Fine Art from the University of Guelph in ’98 and an MFA from the University of Waterloo in ’09. In 2008 he traveled to Ireland and France to work with a variety of accomplished Irish artists courtesy of the Keith and Win Shantz Summer Internship award from the University of Waterloo. In 2009, Carney was the recipient of the Jack Gilbert award for Best Computer Altered Photography at the 48th annual Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition.

“My digital photographs are manipulated to extend the perceptual impact of the subject. By layering different exposures of the same object or circumstance onto itself I create an organic ‘other’. The layering facilitates curious intersections and contradictions. The resulting hybrid image is complicated in orientation and lends itself to memory. The secondary function of the work in this way is an unspecific evocation. My prints ultimately rest in a tension between ‘presentness’ and memory. ”

www.colincarney.com

Audrey is a professional photographer who specializes in fine art, architecture, outdoor and event photography. She spent many years in the agency world working on digital websites and social media for clients. This mix of traditional media with photography gives her a unique view of the world especially in fine art and nature.

Adam Lark is a video and installation artist living and working in Regina, Saskatchewan. Adam graduated from the University of Regina with a B.F.A in Intermedia in 2007. He has participated in solo and group shows locally and internationally. His practice is one of observation and exploration, using the camera apparatus to investigate our surroundings and extract hidden meanings from situations and landscapes he encounters. Adam works primarily in video but does not hesitate to mix medias and experiment with traditional and non-traditional techniques and materials.

AdamLarkArt.com

Justin Wonnacott is an artist, teacher and photographer who also writes from time to time. He has been doing this since 1974 and lives in Ottawa. The 5 photographs below are from a recent body of work titled “I remember + I forget” begun in 2006 and which is now complete .

I remember + I forget – Moonfish

An abalone spoon, Asian shrimp and sea urchins

Although it is very hot today my butterfish, blue runner and mackerel look wholesome and good to eat.

The delicious Red snapper often lives to an age of fifty years and more . . .

Samna, from the Sea of Okhotsk

Notwithstanding these pictures of fish, I am very interested in the changing role of photographs and what photographers do in art and popular culture. Some recent bodies of work I have made are informed by

* Traditional and digital photography and the histories of photography
* Constructed imagery and montages
* My relationship to pictures as an image maker and as an image consumer.
* Considering how public art and artworks in public places are informed by site, patrons, political opinions and other circumstances.
* The new realities of image convergence, social nets and database driven image archives , especially with regard to how I(we) locate images, assign meaning to them and make them available to others.

and like millions of others, I take pictures everyday. I teach at the University of Ottawa,  more of my work can be seen at my website , the somerset street site or the Visual arts department’s website.

At first glance Alex McLeod’s digital images look like photographs of sculptural installations or dioramas. They’re something of cross between Takashi Murakami and Peter Doig or perhaps a candy-coated Dil Hildebrand. But these fantastical landscapes don’t exist in real life despite what look like strands of fishing line suspending colourful shiny globules. McLeod’s work is solely digital with the only physical trace being a 36×48 inch framed print.

Quoted in art blog, Things of Desireⁱ, McLeod says his digital art is a “greener” alternative to material practice since it produces next to no waste. But the eco-friendly merits of his work, if cheekily alluded to by his plastic depictions of northern landscape, remains the least interesting part of his oeuvre. More convincing than environmental concerns are the financial and spatial burdens of art school. As a young artist, the sheer cost and space needed to maintain one’s practice is enough to discourage even the most determined. But most critically, the choice to keep his vision digital is very telling about how we learn about and consume art.

I once heard that contemporary art isn’t made to be seen but, rather, it’s made to be photographed. Since most art is actually learned about and consumed through print material, and now the internet, the most successful works are those that reproduce well. Of course there are exceptions to this rule but for the most part, it is a fairly accurate generalization. Most art students do not see the works of the “masters” in person however much they are encouraged to travel to New York or Paris. The cost of education and huge travel distances render it an impossibility for many. Students and many artists, are not only influenced through reproduction but also disseminate their work through reproduction—hence the popularity of artist websites. McLeod critically engages with this fact of art-making by producing work that functions only as reproduction or, perhaps more accurately, repetition since he is not reproducing anything. Using the language of diorama and contemporary painting, McLeod creates images that are always originals and do not require the viewer to travel great distances to experience their “aura.” Their imagined reality is what makes them so evocative and also separates them from other media art. McLeod alludes to an original work using the language of craft but also heightens the original through the glamour of the photographed image. We are left with something more akin to fashion photography than media art—a fetishistic image reproduced on a massive scale.

Documentary based photography of regional Festivals and Canadian Landscapes by Garett Walker.

Garett has travelled across Canada several times documenting the artifacts of regional and culteral heritage. He has an BFA in fine art photography from Ryerson University and is returning this fall 2009 to begin his MFA in Documentary Media studies. See more of his work at www.garett-walker.com

Lance Blomgren is a Vancouver-based artist who works primarily in text and image. Blomgren’s publication projects and text-installations share an ongoing fascination with the relationships between language and social architecture, writing and formulations of place. A number of recent projects seek to unearth the narrative potential of unrelated images, found texts, advertisements, lists and other ‘non productive’ modes of writing and visual communication.

His projects have been staged in North America and Europe at Sox36 (Berlin), Galeria ADN (Barcelona), Sky’s the Limit (Las Cruces, New Mexico),  the Liane and Danny Taran Gallery (Montreal), Dare Dare Centre de diffusion d’art multidisciplinaire de Montréal, Usine C (Montreal), the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta) and 536 (Vancouver).

He is the author of two books, both published by Conundrum Press: Walkups, a novella,  and Corner Pieces, a collection of fiction, images and urban proposals. His writings have appeared internationally in dozens of periodicals, anthologies and exhibition publications, including most recently Art Asia Pacific, Fillip, Geist and in Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture (Black Dog Publishing, 2008).

 

Ellen Moffat is a multi-media artist currently based in Saskatoon. Originally from Toronto, Moffat has lived and worked throughout much of Canada. Her work includes interactive and multi-media installation as well as sound works. Her interests can be grouped under overarching themes of identity and migration. However, her most recent emphasis has been on language and the voice. She allows viewers to become participants, recombining words to make text based work or to make compositions from phonemes, discrete units of speech. Moffat explores the possibilities of voice and text in their capacity for varied signification through recombination as well as their irreducible otherness.

We are currently privileged to have Ellen take part in one of the BlackFlash 2.0 conversations with curator and scholar Michelle Kasprzak. To read what they have to say about new media and interactivity, read the conversation. Please note that the posts are ordered from newest to oldest. To read the conversation in its entirety, please scroll down to the bottom.

Twicescore, 2008

The quote below is taken from Ellen Moffat’s website:

twicescore is a multi-user visual poetry instrument using dual keyboards and physical controllers. Two keyboards provide physical interfaces for text generation with controllers for manipulation of type as typographic design. The separate texts are projected as integrated concentric circles onto a bed of glass bead on the floor. Poems can be posted to a web site as a publishing outlet and public archive. Inspired by ”zuverspaetceterandfigurinnennenswert ollos”, a 1962 rota-poem by Ferdinand Kriwet, the project fuses interactivity, co-authorship and concrete poetry.

Jamie Campbell makes jokes only he finds funny, but he convinces you to laugh all the same.

Jamie Campbell was born in the shadow of Niagara Falls, then he grew up and wiped the mist off his face and crossed the bulge of Lake Ontario to Toronto and Ryerson University and a BFA in Photography.

Jamie Campbell begins his MFA in Fine Arts- Photography at Concordia University in Montreal in September 2008.

Jamie Campbell works with the themes of insecurity, burden, vulnerability and desperation, but does it with self-deprecation and humour and profound honesty, leaving you unsure of whether you want to hit him or hug him.

Jamie Campbell is charming and disarming and surprising and warm, and would probably give you the shirt off his back because he is a nice guy and also because he is always wearing three or four.

Jamie Campbell rides an old brown bike everywhere he goes and has interesting facial hair and makes mild jokes at everyone’s expense, even his own, and he is an old-fashioned romantic and he is about as close to a fictional character as a real person can get.

Jamie Campbell has a website, which is – www.jamiecampbellphotography.com

Mark Lewis is one of Canada’s most renowned and internationally acclaimed artists working in film-based media (digital and analog), and photography. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1958, and has worked most of his life in Toronto and in Vancouver. He currently lives and works in London, England. Starting out as a photographer, Mark Lewis attended Harrow College of Art (London) and the Polytechnic of Central London, and began making films in the mid 1990s. He has had major solo museum exhibitions all over the world, including: the Vancouver Art Gallery, Hamburger Kunstverein, Musée d’art moderne (Luxembourg), BFI Southbank (London) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucharest, Romania), and in 2007 presented at PS1 as part of the International Projects Series. His work is in many prestigious museum collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art New York, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).

Mark Lewis is co-founder and co-editor, with Charles Esche, of Afterall– a research and publishing organisation based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. He is a founding and co-editor–of Afterall Journal, and the series editor of the One Work, a series of books, published by Afterall Books that examine important single modern and contemporary works of art. Recent titles in the series include Andy Warhol: Blow Job by Peter Gidal and Alighiero e Boetti: Mappa by Luca Cerizza. Afterall also publish a series of readers and recently co-produced Art and the Moving Image with Tate Publishing. Mark Lewis is a Research Professor at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of Arts London. Mark is represented by Monte Clark Gallery (Vancouver), Clark & Faria Gallery (Toronto) andGalerie Serge le Borgne (Paris)

He will be representing Canada at the 53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia

Margaret Dragu is LADY JUSTICE: “Mature but not old; Lady Justice aka Lady J and sometimes just La Dragu is without question the world’s most ubiquitous artist model! Formerly called Justita, and earlier Themis, Dike & Ma’at, she is seen in paintings, sculptures, friezes around the world, & as chachkas on E-Bay.”

Dragu’s persona allows her to explore sex and representation, sexuality in time of war, transgressed/transgendered body, public/private obsession with celebrity, symbols/symbolism, fata morgana/simulacrum, & notions of vengeance/bearing witness. It is the act of BEARING WITNESS that is central to her work as Lady Justice.

One of Dragu’s projects is collecting photos of justice/injustice (including traffic accidents, hit and runs) taken by Dragu herself or by other artists through mail/correspondence art.

Jessica McCarrel is a painter, art administrator, and deathrocker. She currently paints images of cadavers and works at The New Gallery in Calgary, Alberta. She earned a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2005 and has exhibited her work in Canada, and the U.S.

Each work is treated as most cadaver researchers do, with a mixture of compassion and emotional reserve. http://www.jessicamccarrel.com

Charles Stankievech works at the intersection of art, architecture and theory. Through aesthetic experimentation and rigorous research, he reveals latent histories while questioning conventional boundaries. His writings have been included in several academic journals, such as Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), numerous artist’s catalogues and translated into French, Italian and German. His work has been exhibited in the Biennale of Architecture (Venice), Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), Subtle Technologies (Toronto), Eyebeam (New York), and the Planetary Collegium (UK). Stankievech holds an MFA in Open Media and BA (hon.) in Philosophy + Literature. He is represented by Galerie Donald Browne in Montreal. Currently developing the new KIAC School of Visual Art in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Stankievech is also a researcher in the Digital Media network for theUniversity of the Arctic.

Selected Project: The DEW Project, field installation with online audio stream and historical archive.  Yukon Territory, 2009.

stankievech.net , galeriedonaldbrowne.com

JG Hampton is an emerging multi-disciplinary artist from Regina, SK. Hir prints dissolve form to invigorate, rather than limit, the potentiality inherent in the viewing/reading process. Hir interest lies in the reogranization that occurs when a subject encounters a system, and works to facilitate this (de)stabilizing phenomena. Hampton has a diploma in 3d animation, and is currently finishing a interdisciplinary focused BA in visual arts. Hampton’s diverse practice includes digital, installation, print, photography, video, audio, and social mediums.

Hampton’s is currently working in interactive print installation; this new work will debut at Neutral Ground artist run center in JG Hampton’s show The Circle and The Abyss, this summer.

www.jghampton.com

The submitted image, from the series titled Dream Lab, is a collaborative venture between myself and the Dream and Nightmare Lab at The Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal.  Through this work, the lab and I produced new knowledge about the hypnagogic stage of the sleep cycle.  The hypnagogic stage occurs at sleep onset and there are often hallucinatory images and short periods of dreaming that occur during this time. Artists like Salvador Dali used this stage of sleep to harness creative imagery and problem solve. Dali also employed the ‘upright napping’ technique which involves falling asleep upright and seated in a chair. I have adopted  this technique in my series.

In essence, what results is a photograph of the exact moment the person is falling asleep, just before the customary head nod.  Conceptually I am intrigued by the fact that as this photograph is taken, each person is literally in another state of consciousness.

This work was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Sarah Fuller is a Winnipeg born artist who now works and lives in Banff, Alberta. She earned a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2003 and has exhibited her work in Canada, and the U.S.  . Her work is held in  the collection of the Canada Council Art Bank and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Simmons and Burke are an artist duo working collaboratively from digital imagery and sound. These two artists are commissioned by BlackFlash 2.0 to make an artist project in addition to artist Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge. Here’s a short statement from their website:

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Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge is one of the artists BlackFlash is commissioning to work on an online project for 2.0. Here’s a short article about her work:

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