Capture Photography Festival Highlights Part 2: Tris Vonna-Michell, Scott Massey, and Malcolm Levy

by Rhiannon Herbert

Recently shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2014, Tris Vonna-Michell is enjoying some well-earned recognition for his compelling and unique work. With the opening reception having kicked off on Thursday April 23^rd, Vonna-Michell’s exhibition at the consistently excellent Presentation House Gallery (333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver) features slide projections, photographs and film that comprise his multi-disciplinary approach to story-telling.

The current exhibition, part of Vancouver’s 2015 Capture Photography Festival, demonstrates a true connective wit in both use of media, and of ideas; linking historical research, possibly semi-fictive narratives and visual materials in ways that simultaneously affirm, re-imagine, and destabilize the notion of narrative, as we accept it, in visual content. Drawing from personal realms and sourced cultural samples, pieces like Capitol Complex, 2014, come off like a knowing remix and messing-up of linear routes taken in both a story, and in a simple walk: a realized detournement that nods to the Situationist’s horror at utopian architecture.

Also open as of the 23rd are the “Spectrum Studies” works of Vancouver local Scott Massey, at the Wil Aballe Art Projects/WAAP space (105 – 1356 Frances Street). His work speaks to the geek-at-heart, and is as visually active as it is intellectually curious. In what seems to be a natural continuation of the “Spectrum Studies” works shown at the first Capture Photography Festival in 2013, at the same space. The festival literature available describes the work as studies based on techniques and themes he previously employed to create the film, Light Adjustments (Centre of the Universe), 2014, which premiered this past winter at the Dazibao centre in Montreal, who specialize in showcasing experimental and contemporary image practice.

The works in Spectrum Studies are indeed spectral, in that they appear unearthly, and in their bearing slices of the light spectrum—though comprised of analogue landscape photography. Technique and technology are heavy in this series, whose pieces contain several individuated exposures from one piece of film, while exploring the visible, greyscale, day-night, and ultra-infra spectrums. See the full work explanation, which is really necessary to appreciate the work, on the Capture website: http://capturephotofest.com/exhibitions/spectrum-studies-2/.

Last yet not least to mention for the coming weeks is the photo and video work of Malcom Levy, titled “Jüdisches Krankenhaus Berlin” and also currently installed at the Aballe space. Though another narrative remix of sorts, the film itself is historically sourced from archival footage of the Jewish Hospital in Berlin and hospital secretary Hilde Kahan, who worked through the Hospital’s continued operation through the Second World War and the Holocaust. The exhibition features additional, static visual works, along with supporting documentation and information for the hospital site, history, along with an interview with Kahan.

Capture Photography Festival ran from April 2-29, 2015, in various venues around Vancouver.