Peopled by the Unknown / Susan Dobson and Matt Macintosh
Opening Reception: September 13, 2013, 6 – 9 p.m. and Artist talk at 6:30 p.m.
Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
401 Richmond Street West Suite #120
On Friday September 13th, Gallery 44 reopened its doors to a much excited public. After being under renovation for months members enthusiastically inspected the clean, white gallery and hurried down to the basement to investigate the new darkroom and scanning area. One excited member stated “I have to leave because right now all I can see is the walls, I’ll be back another day for the art.” The evening was also the first opening reception of the 2013-2014 season. It featured Susan Dobson’s 2012 video work Simulcast and Matt Macintosh’s Icon Drive. The pair both used archival materials (found photographs or sound files) to create their thought provoking pieces.
After carefully editing important objects out of his images, Macintosh returned tiny specks of dust, scratches and shifted the colour balance to green bringing authenticity and continuity to his archival images. As he said, “This set of images takes away the object of people’s work to reveal the type of attention we give to objects. In the case of posed documentary photographs of women producing medicine and munitions during WWII, it is the same attention that is appropriated by propagandistic and religious imagery. I am interested in the liberating value of images that show “rapture” that is aware it is being watched.”
Visitor in front of Matt Macintosh, Subject 2, inkjet print, 2012
Visitors discussing the work of Matt Macintosh.
Susan Dobsons piece is well worth spending time with, the visuals bring you to a relaxed, tranquil place (driving county roads late at night) while the sound jars you somewhere else.
Artist Susan Dobson
“The video Simulcast was inspired by a lecture I heard in Mexico City in 2005. Anthony Bannon, Director of George Eastman House, discussed photographic history and its evolution into digital and time-based media. He likened the uncertainty of what might come next for the medium to driving in a car late at night, with the headlights illuminating only a tiny strip of pavement at a time. The video footage, produced seven years later, was captured through the windshield of a moving car on paved and unpaved roads late at night. The only illumination comes from the car’s headlights and the occasional farmhouse and passing car.
Susan Dobson, Simulcast, video still, 2012
The visual is primarily black and white, and the camera remains stationary so that the windshield operates as a framing device. The audio component is an edited and condensed version of Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio broadcast War of the Worlds, a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ novel in which aliens invade earth….The loud digitized and disembodied voice of a GPS device, however, interrupts repeatedly, jolting the viewer back to the present. The two audio tracks refer to both past and present, questioning the veracity or absolute certainty of any information or technology. ” Susan Dobson
Joyce Lau is discussing her work
In addition to these works Joyce Lau, a Ryerson graduate showed her photographs of stolen objects from the Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau in a different maner. The large collections of stolen items “became known as Kanada, associating the goods with the riches and abundance of the country.”
Joyce Lau is looking at her work Kanada
Through vitrines Lau magnifies specific parts of the image, forcing us to not only consider the large amount of people that suffered but also the individual.
The show is open: September 13 – October 12, 2013. Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography at 401 Richmond Street West Suite #120. Gallery hours: Tues – Sat, 11 – 5 p.m.
Text and Photo: Julia Hendrickson