Featured Scotiabank Contact photography festival
May 3 – May 31, 2014
Opening May 3, from 3 to 5 pm
Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is proud to present as part as Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival this exhibition which features new works by Toronto-based photographer Marc Audette and Montreal-and Vancouver-based artist Adad Hannah. Unifying these two bodies of work are the artists’ expressive interaction between photographic history, nature, and current technology.
Audette exploits and explores the conventions and technological features of photography, establishing both the limits and the possibilities of the image while creating wonder and incongruity. Through videos, photo projections, back lit and still photos with video overlays, he re-stages core processes for viewing, imagining, and communicating. The Line is a series of photographs in which Audette plays with a custom-made, portable lighting system in forests of the Americas. The bright line of light that runs through the photographs operates like a drawing tool, exploring and embracing the landscape while suggesting narrative possibilities.
Hannah is known for his signature video, photography, and installation works that often reference or re-enact famous artworks. Hannah’s Blackwater Ophelia painstakingly restages the 1852 painting Ophelia by John Everett Millais, drawing attention to the artifice of photographic images. The exhibition also includes works from The Russians, a series set in the Russian countryside, which are based on the early colour-photography techniques of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii.
Image: Marc Audette, Castlegar, 2014