┐ The noise we can └

Protest in Montreal against the rise of tuition fees in Quebec and the new law 78.
Every evening at 8pm people meet in the street with their pots and pans and make all the noise they can.

The song (INTUITION #1 – Avec pas d’casque / avecpasdcasque.bandcamp.com/album/astronomietranslated) reads something like this:

You will say, you will say that it is instinct that guided you here, the intuition of a feeling that will never return
You will say, you will say all your senses were betting on the same side, for the same cause, moved by a strange force
And this will be your home base and this will be your home base
You will say, you will say that it is instinct that guided you here, a necessary imprudence from time to time
And this will be your home base and this will be your home base

 

 

┐ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen └

@ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, hood, from the series Flower City (work in progress)

@ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, gray, from the series Flower City (work in progress)

@ Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, twin, from the series Flower City (work in progress)

In Flower City I’m focusing on the area where I live (Brampton, Ontario), a relative nowhere city transformed by a failed greenhouse industry, as a stand in for photographic experience. I’m really interested in how the medium functions as both art and photography, specifically how these two distinct aspects of a greater whole can alter and mediate what we see.
For the whole series I’ve worked with a large format camera and shot everything on black and white film, making the body of work a cryptic play not only on the ambiguous nature of photography itself, but showing the medium’s specific nature of looking. There is something archaic in using a 4×5 camera and how it can render basic and minimal compositions of people, places and objects as almost alien or distanced. In this respect I’ve specifically chosen to photograph subjects that range the gamut from quasi-exotic to the completely mundane. I’m interested in how these two extremes can have the same presence and become almost mythologized or iconic.

excerpt from Mossless magazine

More of Noel’s work here

┐ Aidan McNeil └

© Aidan McNeil, Maria, from the series Works in Progress, 2009

© Aidan McNeil, Ruth, from the series Works in Progress, 2009

More of Aidan’s work hereand here

┐ Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge └

© Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, 1909, from the series Work in Progress, 1980

© Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, 1956, from the series Work in Progress, 1980

“Work in Progress is a short history of working women from 1909 to 1979. Each decade is represented by a different woman posed in a kitchen in which the props change with each period. Each image has a window into which a documentary photo indicates the politics of the period, a calendar that indicates the predominant type of work in which women were employed and a family photo that indicates the family structure of the time (from extended family to a single mom).

The women are posed in relation to their job. 1909 shows a woman doing piecework at home with the last remnants of the slave trade in the window. 1919 shows a woman about to go out the door to work with her lunch bag while she is momentarily distracted by the window which shows the Winnipeg General Strike. 1928 shows a office worker (telephone operator) with Soviet woman tractor drivers in the window. 1938 shows an unemployed woman looking through the want ads with women from the Spanish Civil War in the window. 1945 has a woman war worker with soviet women pilots in the window. 1956 shows a woman retail or service worker fading into the background with a baby bottle (women being pushed back into the home) with the Hungarian uprising in the window. 1968 portrays a Quebecois woman with the Vietnam war pictured in the window. 1979 shows a South Asian women holding a photo of union women with women celebrating the independence of Zimbabwe.”

Carole and Karl’s

┐ Brendan George Ko └

© Brendan George Ko, Ablution, from the series The Barking Wall, 2010-11

© Brendan George Ko, Tomb, from the series The Barking Wall, 2010-11

I remember as a kid I used to cover my face with my hands, and peek at the world through my fingers. I could see the world, but the world couldn’t see me. Nowadays I find myself assimulating with the hybrid, a creature I share a betwixt nature with, for we are both between two worlds, having multiple origins, and demand our own realm, such as a gothic castle, a tomb, or limbo to serve as a haven, I seek to create a peace with a conflict of belonging.
The Barking Wall serves as a vault; a collection of visual memories that cross-pollinate with lived experience, and extended history (of past generations, oral tradition, and cinema), and spawn new hybrid moments. Applied layer after layer, these confused memories let go of specific places and time, and drift like phantoms, roaming free through the fields of imagination, meeting the visitor half-way, and letting one create their own narrative

Brendan’s work is here

┐ Alex Kisilevich #2 └

I published one of Alex’s photographs from a work in collaboration with Lindsay Page more than a year ago but I ran into his work again and though his process is worth a little more attention than the one given before, so here’s Alex comeback.

© Alex Kisilevich, Salesman, 2009

© Alex Kisilevich, Stick-Figure, 2011

“Describe your process of creating a piece. What materials do you normally work in?

I used to have this rigid process where I had an exact idea of what I wanted for my image and its particular meaning. I would draw a terrible drawing and try to meticulously recreate it as a photo. This method worked for a while but I’m quite content that I grew out of it. I’ve learned to trust myself a bit. I try to go with the flow to allow for unplanned things to unfold – not to say that everything is completely improvised. I’ll come in with some sort of idea that could include a location or object or something that connotes a certain feeling or idea and then I take it from there. I just don’t try to plan out every detail. This allows me to be more in tune with my surroundings and has generally produced better results. For materials: a camera, a lens, film, a film scanner, computer, Kodak photo paper. Also, anything from second hand stores is fair game.”

excerpt from Artist profile by Sara Titanic for “Now Magazine”, 2010

More of Alex’s work can be seen here

┐ Marisa Portolese └

© Marisa Portolese, Maya, from the series Imagined Paradise

© Marisa Portolese, Celia, from the series Imagined Paradise

“The Imagined Paradise series is about having an aesthetic experience that is surreal and attainable only through flight of the imagination.
The images present the viewer with two distinct universes, the real and imagined. The subjects are solemn, still, contemplative and in awe. Their desire to escape is evident by what they see through the mind’s eye. And what they pine for is a place that is ethereal, vibrant, effervescent, but also beyond reach, fantastical and larger than life.”

More of Marisa’s work here

┐ Dianne Davis └

© Dianne Davis, Untitled, from the series Haven, work in progress

© Dianne Davis, Untitled, from the series Haven, work in progress

More of Dianne’s work here

┐ Meryl McMaster └

© Meryl McMaster, Sentience, from the series In-between worlds, 2010

© Meryl McMaster, Viage, from the series In-between worlds, 2010

“In-Between Worlds explores the mixing and transforming of my bi-cultural identities – Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian – and addresses the idea of liminality; of being betwixt and between cultural identities and histories. The series presents a sequence of moments that appear out of the ordinary and can be interpreted as being in a state of suspended belief. Talisman and prop-like sculptures become extensions of the body that suggest a collaging of identities. In-Between Worlds is a dialogue in which the viewer questions him or herself and the world in new ways.”

More of Meryl’s work here

┐ Jinyoung Kim └

© Jinyoung Kim, work in progress, 2011

© Jinyoung Kim, work in progress, 2011

More of his work can be seen here

┐ Luce Pelletier └

© Luce Pelletier, Le leurre de l’hêtre, from the series The Lure, 2004

© Luce Pelletier, Le leurre du plantain, from the series The Lure, 2004

“The series of The lure (2004) is composed of ten photographs in big format are imprinted on silk cloth (127 x 154cm). The Lure’s representing glove plants, placed in situ so as to make belief that they come from nature. These photography’s suggest the influence of biotechnologies over the environment – objects/hands prepared with vegetable matter – sewn, stitched with string thread, weaved and produced on a small scale. Equivalences are established between the hand and the plant and between the skin and organic matter. These objects present themselves as objects of study – belonging to the sciences and occupying the center of the photographic image inspiring the botanical taxonomies to which this project makes reference. The hand motif is recurrent and recalls the important presence of humans and their relation to the environnement but the motif also appears as the sign of change in nature. Natural mutation as a biological phenomenon inscribes itself in the genes of living organisms and participates to organique changes of the current landscape. The photographs express this relation and the vital and reciprocal influence of the object in a place, in nature and to human nature. I propose a lure of biotechnologie as a result of experimentation and genetique manipulation. I hope his work prompts viewers to question modern agricultural practices, which have become, in his words, “dubious science” in the age of genetic engineering.”

More of Luce’s work can be seen here

┐ Éliane Excoffier └

© Éliane Excoffier

© Éliane Excoffier

“Excoffier’s tableaux bespeak a coherent narrative of the human drama. Despite postmodernism’s grandiloquent discourse about “paradigm shifts,” our tragicomedy most often unfolds incrementally, rather than by leaps and bounds. Likewise, the theatre of our lives resides rarely on mountaintops, but instead usually at the myriad interstices that we overlook amidst the hustle and bustle of day-to-day living. Its details furnish the backdrop for Excoffier’s scenes. She accordingly fleshes out her storyline through mundane phenomena – the texture of cloth, smudges on a mirror, creases in a plastic tarp, limp apparel, a run in nylons, coarse rope, wiry pubic hair, or the grain of mortal skin.

In short, she articulates the concreteness of both sentient and inanimate subjects so as to render them visually tactile. I therefore call her work haptic photography, because of its predilection for the sense of touch. However, by virtue of representing a tangible object through an intangible image, the photographic medium creates a shear between materiality and immateriality. Excoffier’s art results largely from her investigation of that crux.”

Full article in the Ciel Variable

More of Éliane’s work here

┐ Chih-Chien Wang └

© Chih-Chien Wang, Banana skin on chair, from the Jelly Project #2, 2009

© Chih-Chien Wang, Feet with dry leaves, from the series The centre of the forest is a lake like mirror, 2005

© Chih-Chien Wang, Crabs, from the series The centre of the forest is a lake like mirror, 2005

“In his photographs, we have the impression of seeing time frozen in a process of research, of assemblages and minute maneuverings. The goal of which is, according to the artist, to ‘rediscover’ what is around him. To do this, Wang produces modest and efficient compositions that demonstrate an intense sensitivity to the shapes of things that travel through the domestic universe. With finesse and elegance, he translates the transience of the material world as it manifests itself in a crumpled piece of wrapping paper, food scraps on a table, an old rag. Wang develops a malleable vocabulary in his photographs – with a simplicity that reinforces the structure of that which rests on the contrasts of colours, the effects of textures, and the outlines of objects with undefined backgrounds. Wang searches for the essence of his compositions with a scarcity of means and without either artifice or ostentation; and his games and masquerades resituate something of himself.”

François Dion, excerpt from “Combinations”, Spirale #215, July 2007,

A must see!!!

More of his work here

║ Erik Osberg ║

© Erik Osberg, Erik and Carl, 1988, from the series Layla, Ryan, Erik, and Carl, 2007

© Erik Osberg, from the series Layla, Ryan, Erik, and Carl

“I think photography and writing are very similar, in so far as their various forms and traditions are simultaneously concrete and elastic. There are people who make genre-based work: romance, sci-fi, biography, portrait, landscape, journalism, etc. And there is an audience of people who expect these genres, as well (imagine yourself working in a used bookstore being barked at about the whereabouts of How the Scots Invented the Modern World, or going to your parent’s friends house who have a framed poster of the Avedon picture of the woman and the elephants). But there are also people who have ideas and proceed to work them out using one of the numerous known forms available, or an amalgam of various forms. All this to say that contemporary cultural production may be presented in a relatively unlikely package, which is probably pretty obvious. I have ideas that I want to make public and I work them out most commonly with pictures.”

More of Erik’s work can be seen here

║ Lisa Klasptock ║

© Lisa Klapstock, Beige sofa, from the series Living room, 2004

© Lisa Klapstock, Yellow armchair, from the series Living room, 2000

“Since 1998, I have been developing a body of work shot exclusively in laneways around my neighbourhood in downtown Toronto. The laneway is a discrete and relatively uncontrolled urban space where the boundary between public and private realms is mutable. The mutability of thresholds separating public and private space creates an uneasy, but potent ambiguity. A garage door opens and becomes a window into another space that opens into yet another, the backyard. The garage becomes public when the door is raised; or conversely the laneway is privatized as this domain, with its contents and occupants, expands into the lane. My presence as a photographer is largely unwelcome in the laneway, and I am often made to feel as though I am trespassing.

Living Room is a performative occupation of this public place. Encased in protective paper coveralls, I seat myself, uninvited, on a stranger’s discarded furniture, and make a record.

Each image in the series is a unique size. The size is determined by the scale of the figure, which remains identical in every portrait. In this work, I am interested in drawing attention to the act of composing within the camera. I am also interested in subverting the convention of traditional photographic taxonomies that present a suite of images of identical size and scale.

The Living Room images are presented in a white frame that works like a window architrave, framing a view onto the photographed space. In this work, the frame, like the photographic image itself, serves to further ‘domesticate’ the laneway.”

artist’s statement

More of Lisa’s work here

║ Janieta Eyre ║

© Janieta Eyre, Motherhood, from the series Motherhood

© Janieta Eyre, Two pages from my diary, from the series Lady Lazarus

“Speaking of photographs of racing horses, Rodin once said ‘It is the artist who is truthful and the camera that lies because, in reality; time does not stand still”. When Janieta Eyre states that “The media and photography have something in common: they are both more fiction than fact” she is reaffirming Rodin’s reasoning in an up-to-date way. She is also confirming that, despite appearances, she is the heir to a tradition that is far older than is usually realised. In the by now enormous flood of hooks and articles dedicated to the transvestite and misc en scene practices that have recently swept the world of visual arts, above all photography, their origins have often been forgotten. These are to be found in the practitioners of what might be called artistic photography during its greatest period, from Rejlander to Julia Margaret Cameron whose model Mary Hillier was transformed so often into the Virgin Mary as to merit the nickname of Mary Madonna: not bad for faking reality given we are dealing with a modest servant in Cameron’s household.

So the roots of a tendency to counterfeit or reinvent reality in a theatrical way are to be found -not just for Pyre but for Sherman, Ontaili and others – within this tradition (and we should not forget that, both at the beginning and at the end of the century, this involved photography’s emulation of painting: first in order to acquire artistic dignity and later to reaffirm the centrality it had by now gained) Yet if her roots are to be found in this tradition it is also true that Pyre’s work is substantially different just as her results are different, above all because in the meantime some very powerful artists have tackled these themes and have provided further areas for exploration: just think of Ralph Fugene Meatyard’s fundamental The Family Album at Lucybell Grater or of the early self-portraits of Urs Luthi, even though an abyss separates the two artists (both of whom were, significantly, born at the beginning of the Sixties). Furthermore Lyre, born in London in the mid-sixties and now working in Canada, has a markedly different sensibility (and perhaps I should also mention here that the apparently realistic images off the wall are also the result of manipulation as well as being staged).

Above all this sensibility of hers has developed from a cool mixture of high and low culture where allusions to the painting of the past are as frequent as those to cartoons, where Alice in Wonderland refers not only to the book by Carroll (one of Cameron’s circle of photographers, amongst other things) but to the Walt Disney cartoon film, where Greenaway can mix with Waters’ Pink Flamingos with a nod to Fellini’s Casanova along the way, and all giving life to a wealth of images deviated and deviant with respect to the usual pathos of artistic influences. It is not by chance that this also occurs in the most recent series by Tracey Moffatt who crosses Quinta del Sordo with Fantasia. (…)”

Essay by Walter Cuadagnini. To continue reading click here

More of Janieta’s work can be seen here

║ Kitra Cahana ║

© Kitra Cahana, Untitled, from the series Rainbowland

© Kitra Cahana, Untitled, from the series Rainbowland

More of Kitra’s work here

║ Elena Willis ║

© Elena Willis, In a beautiful place in the country, from the series Group effect, 2004

© Elena Willis, In a beautiful place in the country, from the series Naturally human, 2003

More of Elena’s work here

║ Alex Kisilevich ║

© Alex Kisilevich (in collaboration with Lindsay Page), Untitled, from the series Particulars, 2008

More of Alex’s work can be seen here

║ Jamie Campbell ║

© Jamie Campbell, Turtle boy, from the series Beasts of Burden, 2005

© Jamie Campbell, Turtle boy, from the series Beasts of Burden, 2005

More of Jamie’s work here

║ Robyn Cumming ║

© Robyn Cumming, Untitled, from the series Lady Things, 2008

© Robyn Cumming, Many Shades of Pink, from the series Little Legs, 2006

To see more of Robyn’s work click here

║ Carlos & Jason Sanchez ║

© Carlos & Jason Sanchez, John, 2002

© Carlos & Jason Sanchez, The Gatherer, 2004

More of their work can be seen here