Away from the chaos of the crowded tourist destinations of the Rocky Mountains, the landscape provokes considerations of history, time and an enduring natural power. This overwhelming and oft unnerving force of the mountains is a fine setting for “Séance Fiction,” curated by Peta Rake at the Walter Philips Gallery. In her essay of the same title, Rake references the chapter, “The Slow Cancelation of the Future” in Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life, Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Zero Books, 2014), in which he laments a kind of loss of loss; a 21st century ability to access countless moments and times. In his discussion of temporality, Fischer references the British sci-fi television series Sapphire and Steel wherein Time was an anachronistic force.
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The tradition of cameraless filmmaking spans the history of experimental film; from the work of the Surrealists, to the field of visual music, to the mid-century abstractionists, to a contemporary vanguard of artists working in animation and chemical processes. The artists affiliated with this tradition used many tools in the course of marking, drawing, or in other ways affixing forms onto the film plane. From the direct exposure to light that creates the photogram, to controlled application of paint and emulsion scratches, the processes involved range from the aleatoric to the carefully deliberated.
Singing Lands is the culmination of several years of collaboration between two artists, Nicole Kelly Westman (Calgary) and Ryan Mathieson (Vancouver). Separated by the vast interior, they decided to meet in the “Centre of the Universe” to realize a project. The Centre of the Universe, according to some, is located at Vidette Lake in Deadman Valley, 70kms Northeast of Kamloops, British Columbia. This site has seen many variations; it is the sacred site of the Skeetchestn First Nations, later co-opted as a gold mine, a trading post, and now a spiritual retreat.
As “Stronger Than Stone: (Re)Inventing the Indigenous Monument” opened on the morning of November 21, after a welcome by Siksika Elder, Margaret Water Chief, Jen Budney recalled feeling compelled to understand the reality of her origins and the histories of the peoples of the Americas. Watching the Calgary iterations of the conference online, I realized that I am blind to the reality of where I come from and wondered where my voice fit within the immense subject matter of the symposium.
Figures falling apart into pixelated existence.
Broken down.
Disintegrated.
Ed Spence and Dana Claxton embrace this technological way of digesting or reading, absorbing or even understanding the information held within images. Divided from their original context, in a way, images reverted to analog form illustrate more of a division than a unification of knowledge.
Who are Sarah Anne Johnson’s images for? When Winnipeg photographer Sarah Anne Johnson’s most recent Toronto exhibition, “Wonderlust,” opened in the spring of 2014, she stated that her goal was to “explore the internal world of sexual intimacy. To show what it looks and feels like.” Johnson promised an exhibition of something private—personal, vulnerable, risky—an ambitious attempt to transmit a sense of this tenderness through the media of the photograph.
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 23rd, 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 first time the Vancouver Capture Photography Festival was held was in October of 2013. In a city known for its rich and dedicated photography culture, it was extremely well received. Two years later, it’s back; a soon-to-be annual event, Capture aims to “increase knowledge and appreciation of photography and lens-based art by emphasizing the cultural importance of photography in all its forms,” a mission succinctly described by festival executive director, Kim Spencer-Narin.
Isiah Medina is a moving image artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose movies poetically address the politics of everyday life. Medina defines his place within a Godardian tradition by engaging politically with mediated images and communication. His diaristic movies document his relationships with friends and family and address issues of violence, love, camaraderie, and play.
“Untitled (new visions)” curated by executive director Tarin Hughes, is the second collaboration between artists Barbara Hobot and Maggie Groat. Their objects in the AKA exhibition space are generally small-scale works, brightly colored in rainbow or natural hues.
Writing about send + receive, and sound art in general, creates a paradox, as one has to rely heavily on the left, quantitative, hemisphere of the brain, the one responsible for “visual space,” as it is the mind-space of civilization proceeding for the last four millennia of linearity, according to the Winnipeg-raised media prophet Marshall McLuhan.