Photorama 2022
Fundraising art sale in support of TPW!
Exhibition and sale: November 18 - December 4, 2022
Gallery hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 11am - 5pm
This year’s Photorama celebrates 45 incredible years of the gallery’s commitment to supporting leading, bold and boundary-pushing programming.
Collectors recognize Photorama as a landmark event that offers a view into the future directions of photography and lens-based art. Proceeds from sales provide essential funds for Gallery TPW, guaranteeing continuity to build upon our renowned legacy of groundbreaking programming for years to come.
Photorama Editions returns with a curated collection of ten small works each priced at $120 or $1,000 for the full collection. Photorama Editions features: Alex McLeod, Birthe Piontek, Christina Oyawale, Eliot Wright, Elise Rasmussen, Jordan Browne, Liu Wang, Samuel Roy-Bois, Svava Tergesen and Robin Arseneault.
Photorama 2022 features works by:
Shellie Zhang // Isabel Okoro // Mariam Magsi // Gustavo Jabbaz // Alvin Luong // Laura Kay Keeling // Ella Morton // Vanessa Cornell // Moyra Davey // Christina Oyawale // Anthony Gebrehiwot //
Fraser Collins // Susan Dobson // Tommy Calderon // Ethan Murphy Kristiina Lahde // Natalie Hunter // Ailene deVries // Erika DeFreitas Daura Campos // Kate Schneider // Samuel Choisy // Ryan Van Der Hout // Tizzi Tan // Holly Chang // Tanea Hynes // Jackson Klie // Christopher Katsarov Luna // Sarah Palmer // Amanda Arcuri // Anique Jordan // Chris Shepherd // Jason Deary // Stephanie Foden Sarah Bodri // Miruna Dragan // Ivy Knight // Virginia Mak // Pamila Matharu // Randy Lee Cutler // Jon Laytner.
For more information regarding the Collector's Preview or for consultations, please email, Noa Bronstein, Executive Director: noa @ gallerytpw.ca
Photorama Editions
Liu Wang, Dear Light, 2019
11 x 14 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: Dear Light is about light, that most simple thing we take for granted. We see it, we forget ... But for me, it is the beginning of everything that we see and love. My project features the natural landscape, or composed natural objects under lights, in unique moments that make you almost feel the warm air move above the ocean, or the silence after snow, or all the grace that light brings us.
Christina Oyawale, Shayla, 2018
9 x 13 inch archival print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: Shayla is a study of light and gesture. The feeling you get when the sun hits your face, the heat and warmth as it touches your skin. It transports you back to a place of joy and a yearning for making it out on the other side. To feel everything.
Biography: Christina Oyawale is a Black non-binary disabled lens-based Tkaronto/Toronto artist and curator. They hold a BFA in Photography from Toronto Metropolitan University. Their artistic focus is documenting radical occupation of space. Oyawale strives for community engagement by creating conversations that pertain to the human condition, growth, rebirth and investigations of self. Their practice includes but is not limited to experimental video, photography and installation.
Robin Arseneault, Squeeze, 2022
11 x 16.5 inch archival print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: Squeeze is one of a series of five works, originally printed at 40 x 60 inches. Each work pairs an image taken in Southern Alberta of spherical formations called concretions, with scanned images of classical Rodin sculptures. The collaged final image optically moves from flat, two-dimensional representation, to a three-dimensional sense of volume, complicating a sense of what is body and what is space. The series elicits a doubling of image, material, and meaning that considers the relationship between sculpture and the photographic image.
Biography: Robin Arseneault is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art & Design (BFA, 1998) and the Edinburgh College of Art (MFA, 2005). She was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2007, and received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award in 2008. Arsenault has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Alberta Heritage. Her practice is diverse: sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, collage, animation, video and the creation of artist-books. She has exhibited across Canada and in the USA, Scotland, Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands and has work in public collections including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Art Gallery of Alberta; Nickle Galleries; Scotiabank, Fairmont Hotel Group, and Simons Department Stores. Arseneault is represented by Norberg Hall in Calgary.
These prints were generously produced in sponsorship by Resolve Photo
Samuel Roy-Bois, Glasswork (small vase), 2022
8 x 10 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: Glasswork (small vase) is part of a series of ten photographs documenting short-lived sculptural work. The image was taken at an instance of equilibrium preceding an imminent collapse. The work speaks to notions of entropy and ephemerality, while also engaging in a conversation on the dynamic relations between sculpture, photography and objecthood.
Biography: Samuel Roy-Bois (Quebec City, 1973) is an award-winning artist and Associate Professor in Sculpture at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus. Roy-Bois has an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University (Montréal) and a BFA from Université Laval (Quebec city). His work has been presented at The Esker Foundation, Calgary; The Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver; Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Musée National des Beaux Arts du Québec, Québec city; SFU Art Gallery, Burnaby; Oakville Art Galleries, Oakville; Kamloops Art Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery and Point éphémère, Paris.
Alex McLeod, over view, 2022
8 x 10 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: A landscape that I would like to take you to visit sometime. :D
Biography: Alex McLeod is a visual artist who creates work about interconnection, life's cycles, and empathy, through the computer as a medium. Prints, animations, and sculptures function as gateways into alternative dimensions, oscillating between the real and the imagined. Over the last 13 years, he has exhibited internationally from Tokyo to Montpellier.
2022 Highlights
Isabel Okoro, blu blacc boi, 2020
This artwork is generously supported by Todd Caldwell & Shaun Moore. A donation of $500 will be made to TPW with the purchase of this artwork.
26 x 32 inch inkjet print
Edition 1/1
$500 unframed
About the artwork: Bridging the gaps between Lagos and Toronto, Okoro’s colour and feel series (2020– ) explores an imagined Black utopia through monochromatic images of the people she encounters.
Biography: Isabel Okoro (b. 2001, Lagos NG) is a photographer and budding director currently living, working and schooling in Toronto ON. Isabel developed an interest in photography at the age of twelve while attending a boarding school in Lagos, but it wasn’t until she moved to Toronto in 2016 and received her first camera that she began to develop her artistic practice. Isabel’s work largely focuses on the Black youth experience and exploring the interactions between the motherland and the diaspora. She is interested in how photography and film can be pushed to tell stories that we need to see but haven’t been awarded the opportunity to create. A self-proclaimed dreamer, Isabel’s work is a combination of thoughts that acknowledge the past, confront the present and imagine a future.
Tommy Calderon, untitled (body I), 2019
24 x 20 inch gelatin silver print
Editions 2/3, 3/3, and AP 1 available
$1,400 framed, $1,100 unframed
About the artwork: untitled (body I) is a selection from an ongoing series of gelatin silver prints speaking on the nature of the contemporary moment and the effects on the human condition. This image asks us to interpret our inclinations as a point of connection between, and departure from, one another. untitled (body I) builds upon this concept to navigate our discordant relationship with representation and reality as a means of reconsidering our ultimate philosophical goals. This image investigates the image-making process as a site of dissonance in our interpretation of reality, the process within a darkroom and its dated historic interpretation to contend with individual realities and the seemingly everlasting complexity of the image intertwined with life.
Biography: Tommy Calderon is a first-generation Canadian visual artist and photographer based in Toronto. He received his BFA in photography from TMU Creative School with a minor in philosophy. His practice explores the formal conditions and material history of image-making as elements that impact our identity and internal reality. Calderon’s images explore the connection between personal circumstances and the psyche, analyzing the structure of everyday experiences and the ideas that inform our learned social parameters. His work draws on events from urban life and concepts surrounding the human condition.
Ethan Murphy, Marshall's, 2018
20 x 16 inch C-print
Editions 1/5 and 2/5 available
$650 unframed
About the artwork: Sitting area across from Marshall's Cornerstop.
Biography: Ethan Murphy is a visual artist from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography Studies from the School of Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University and is one of the three directors of DarkNL Community Darkroom. His work links identity and place by reflecting on the psychological impact of Newfoundland's rural environment. Murphy’s work is conceived from a fluctuating perspective acquired from leaving and returning to the island, enabling him to renegotiate his connection to its remote areas. He reconciles his relationship with identity, loss, memory, and family while examining the Newfoundland landscape post cod moratorium, pointing to a series of economic blows dealt to the province over the past half century. Murphy has exhibited internationally, at the National Gallery of Canada, and was awarded the New Generation Photography Award in 2019.
Virginia Mak, Small Moments 08, 2016
12 x 12 inch C-print
AP available
$560 framed
About the artwork: The series, Small Moments conjures from ordinary experience a hidden sense of all that is extraordinary—in just being alive. Each image can be an instant that is free of ornament, implicit of his or her story, its cracking surface about to burst and slip into the future.
Biography: Mak was born in Hong Kong. After graduating with a Philosophy Degree from the University of Calgary, she went on to study Photography at the Ontario College of Art. She is a recipient of project, exhibition and travel grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work has been written about in the Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Star. Mak’s photographs are included in the Art Bank and Toronto Archives, and in other public and private collections worldwide. Her recent works include Countenance and Barrens series. Virginia Mak is represented by Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto and Vancouver; and Newzones Gallery in Calgary.
Amanda Arcuri, Remix 02, 2020
12 x 15 inch archival digital print
Edition 1/15 available
$800 framed
About the artwork: Arcuri’s ongoing Remix series is a continuation of the A Shot in the Dark series, re-worked as the title suggests. The iridescent colours, which mimic chemical stains, are created by layering two negatives of the same subject. Each negative is slightly different as the flowers move or change after being ignited by flame. Here you are able to see the difference or change between the ritualistic-like floral burns that the artist puts her dying subjects through. The images become almost otherworldly, looking infected, which speaks to Arcuri’s interest in undesirable fauna and the use of light.
Biography: Amanda Arcuri is a Toronto-based photographic artist. She started her passion for photography at Toronto Metropolitan University and continued on to complete her MFA at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. Arcuri is drawn to seemingly un-picturesque foliage and spaces that might be considered mundane or overlooked as her photographic subject matter. Her work has been shown at the Gladstone hotel, United Contemporary and On the Slate at Vaughan City Hall, along with public art commissions by the City of Vancouver, City of Vaughan and BigArtTO. She also enjoys teaching children’s and youth art classes at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Daura Campos, (IX) Secret Visibility, 2021
12 x 18 inch inkjet print
Edition of 3 (all available)
$900 framed, $650 unframed
About the artwork: Secret Visibility challenges traditional art-making techniques and hegemonic belief systems related to gender and sexuality. I photographed domestic spaces, and soaked the negatives in site-specific ingredients, culminating in a series of painterly, abstract images in a colour palette akin to bruises to highlight heightened levels of domestic violence and our increasingly intimate relationship to home during the pandemic.
Biography: Daura Campos is a Latinx, self-taught, lens-based artist based in Belo Horizonte, Brasil. Through analogue experimentation, her work prompts broader conversations on existing in a dissident body. Daura is a 2022 The Alternative Art School and FORGE fellow, she was a convener at the 2021 Hemi Convergence by the New York University and the University of Chicago. Daura has exhibited her photographic work in the Analog Film Photography Association, Orlando, FL (2022), Gallery 44, Toronto (2022), Experimental Photo Festival, Barcelona, ES (2021), and more. Her work was also displayed on billboards in Times Square, NY (2021), Los Angeles (2021), Chicago (2021), and Toronto (2021). Her moving-image work was screened in South and North America at the Museum of Art of Pereira, Colombia (2021), the Avant Garde Cultural Center, Bogotá, Colombia (2021), at the No Nation Art Lab, Chicago (2021), and more.
Randy Lee Cutler, Baby Bouquet, 2020
9 x 12 inch hand cut collage
Edition 1/1
$750 framed
About the artwork: This collage is part of a larger series of images titled On the Other Hand. During the start of pandemic isolation in late March 2020, I turned to collaging images in my living room. The handmade activity became a balm to daily existence both as an antidote to digital life and as a slow, meditative, and profoundly empowering process. As thoughts of hand washing, fear of touching surfaces and a general lack of physical intimacy informed daily life, I found myself casting spells through a visual syntax that embraced ciphers, sign language and writing across diverse cultures. Working with a stack of gifted national geographic magazines, I embraced the virus by channelling its RNA code seeking to communicate with COVID 19 through these abstract hieroglyphics. By bringing disparate elements together into new configurations, an emergent lexicon is cast of human gestures and cultural artifacts.
Biography: Taking the form of artist books, collage, performance, printed matter, audio walks, video, and creative/critical writing, Randy Lee Cutler’s practice weaves together themes of materiality and intuition. She is fascinated with the intersection of matter and metaphor. The recent collage series On the Other Hand is a response to gifted National Geographic magazines, pandemic lockdowns and anti-racism initiatives. An artist book OTOH includes 70 of the collages and the essay “Unsettled Feelings”. Randy is a Professor at Emily Carr University on the unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver, Canada.
Ailene deVries, Mom & I by the Flower Garden, 2021
8 x 10 inch inkjet print
Edition of 3, all available
$600 framed, $300 unframed
About the artwork: "Throughout the circumnutation process, the bean plant writes circular gestures in the air. Give the tip of the plant ink and watch it draw a telephone cord. Or give it a needle and watch it sew itself into a seam."
These words and this image are fragments of a book by the artist, which was self-published in 2021. The publication is a field guide, an unravelling of daughterhood, and the grip of a pen. Otherwise, it's a tendril, a skein, a word.
Biography: Ailene deVries (she/they) is an artist working with words, plants, and fibers. They hold a BFA from the Toronto Metropolitan University and an MA from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tanea Hynes, Overburden, 2020
13 x 19 inch inkjet print
Edition 4/5 available
$250 unframed
About the artwork: This is a photograph of an open pit mine's waste dump at dawn. Below the photograph is the artist's handwriting.
Biography: Tanea Hynes is a lens-based, settler artist from Labrador. Her work is critical of extractive industries and corporations in isolated places. Hynes draws on her personal experiences and upbringing in a Northern Canadian company town to create an intimate narrative of rural life under late-stage capitalism.
Laura Kay Keeling, And Yet, I Continue To Bloom In The Shadows, 2019
Photorama 2022 is generously sponsored by:
Sarah Aranha
Todd Caldwell & Shaun Moore
Birthe Piontek, Monstera, 2020
12 x 8.5 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: In Piontek’s series Janus, the idea of transformation is depicted by focusing on objects like fruits, vegetables and flowers—items that are commonly associated with the traditional still-life genre. Some objects are photographed alone, while in other images Piontek performs with them, revealing an affinity between her body and the objects. Much of the series rests on the idea of a likeness of all organic matter that is exposed to the forces of change.
Biography: Birthe Piontek is a visual artist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories, also known as Vancouver. Her work intends to make visible what is invisible but what can be experienced or felt, i.e. identity constructions, influences of memory and unconscious mind, sociological constructs and belief systems. In 2018, she was the recipient of the Edward Burtynsky Award. Her book Abendlied was nominated as one of the best photo books of 2019 by Time Magazine, and her recent project Janus was published in 2021. Piontek is an Assistant Professor of Photography at The Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver.
Svava Tergesen, Zanfirico Glassware, 2021
9.5 x 13.3 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: This image came about as the result of an infatuation with 18th and 19th century Venetian glassware. These wildly ornate period glasses were so finely wrought, the vessels themselves no longer serve any functional purpose. Often, they are in a state of becoming something else entirely—a dragon, dolphin, flower or bird. I wanted to double down on this gesture of being in a state of "becoming" by re-creating the glasses out of food, the very substance they would normally contain. Can the body and substance become the ornament itself?
Biography: Svava Tergesen (b. 1993; Vancouver, BC, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in photography. Combining elements of sculpture, collage and cooking, her work reimagines everyday experiences of domesticity. She has exhibited at the Polygon Gallery (North Vancouver, Canada); Macaulay Fine Art & Co. (Vancouver, BC); the University of Iowa (Iowa City, USA); Seymour Art Gallery (North Vancouver, Canada); and she was recently long-listed for the New Generation Photography Prize. Her most recent project, Garnished sundries, was on view at twenty bus shelters around the City of Vancouver in January 2022.
Jordan Browne, Untitled #04, 2016
8 x 12 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: Seated nude.
Biography: Jordan Browne is a photo-based artist whose work explores formalist qualities of the body through the lens of gay and queer male desire. His work examines the ways in which body language and gesture can communicate unseen emotion. Browne obtained his Bachelor’s in Photography Studies in 2016 and his Master’s in Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). He has participated in group exhibitions and auctions within the Toronto community. Browne exhibited his first solo exhibition, Sweet Dreams, Francis at the Image Centre, Student Gallery in 2017.
Elise Rasmussen, The Year Without a Summer, 2020
10 x 7.5 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: This image is a still from the film The Year Without a Summer which takes its title from a phenomenon that occurred in the summer of 1816 wherein many parts of the world experienced extreme weather conditions. Dramatic storms and colourful skies gave inspiration to Romantic art, as witnessed in works by J.M.W. Turner and Casper Friedrich; while poor harvests, economic decline and civil unrest influenced Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein during her summer sojourn to Lake Geneva. A century and a half later it was discovered that the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia was the cause of this erratic shift in the world’s weather patterns, creating a famine in Switzerland and speculation that the world was ending. Using this historical framework as a provocation, The Year Without a Summer re-examines the effects of this environmental anomaly, finding parallels with our current climate crises, while intertwining diaristic accounts of Mary Shelley and her circle, Sumbawan folklore, and my own reflections travelling to the same volcano and lake during the hottest summer on record.
Biography: Elise Rasmussen is a research-based artist working with lens-based media. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work internationally including venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, Pioneer Works (New York), Night Gallery, JOAN (Los Angeles), Institute of Modern Art, University of Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Belvedere 21 (Vienna), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Dazibao (Montreal), Art Gallery of Alberta, Latitude 53 (Edmonton), the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto and Gallery 44 (Toronto). Elise received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been an artist in residence at a number of institutions including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), La Becque (Switzerland), the Nirox Foundation (South Africa), LMCC (New York), SOMA (Mexico City), the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta) and was a 2016 Fellow in the Art & Law Program (New York). Born in Edmonton, Canada, Elise lives in Los Angeles, California.
Eliot Wright, Rolled Steel, 2015
11 x 7 inch inkjet print, edition of 15
$120
About the artwork: In 2015, I spent a number of days photographing Hamilton’s industrial sector and surrounding neighbourhoods to further my research into Canada's industrial history. Long regarded as Canada’s "steel city," Hamilton is rapidly changing. This photograph, which came from my early visits, depicts rolled steel being transported through the sprawling Dofasco plant. Initially drawn to this image by the strong shadows and bold colours, I now think about the role that this steel—likely destined for the automotive industry—plays in complex global supply chains and manufacturing.
Biography: Eliot Wright is a Toronto-based photographer, educator and curator whose work frequently focuses on the complexities of landscape, investigating notions of place and transition. His images stem directly from exploration: a desire to be present in the world, to look closely and to think about how spaces are shaped. Wright’s photographs are regularly exhibited in diverse venues in Canada, including Urbanspace Gallery, Toronto; and the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry, Stellarton; and have been presented in notable publications such as Canadian Art and the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward. Born and raised in Newfoundland, Wright received a BFA, Major in Photography from NSCAD University and an MFA in Documentary Media at Toronto Metropolitan University. He currently teaches photography part time at Toronto Met and works as a freelance photographer.
Holly Chang, Blue, 2022
This artwork is generously supported by Sarah Aranha. A donation of $750 will be made to TPW with the purchase of this artwork.
14 x 17 inch fabric images on cotton
Edition 1/1
$400
About the artwork: This work is from the series How to Build a Memory Palace as part of Chang's member-in-residence program at Gallery 44. How to Build a Memory Palace explores personal memories and archives through quilting and textiles. The inspiration for this project comes from a recent discovery of diaries belonging to the artist's great-grandmother, chronicling over 50 years of her daily life. Most chronicle her grandmother's everyday life via the weather or daily tasks, stimulating Chang's interest in how we can explore the idea of family and collective memory through written ephemera. The material hints at a nostalgic idea of family and what it can be, but with a shroud of uncertainty regarding what it is. Sourced from the Toronto Public Library’s photo collection, the images draw from a collective memory which Chang is interested in repurposing and collating. The medium of the quilt is a familiar and often a familial object, encouraging the audience to think about how familial memory can be retrieved. Chang combines the practice of quilting with publicly sourced images to question how the construction of memory is neither truth nor fiction.
Biography: Holly Chang is an artist based in Toronto, who has recently completed her MA in Communication and Culture at TMU/York University. Chang—as a second-generation Chinese Canadian—maintains cultural ties with her cross-cultural identity and draws on her hybrid background for inspiration. Chang makes use of a variety of artistic mediums including textiles, photography, ceramics and natural dyeing. She has recently exhibited her work in her first solo show with Gallery 44 in April 2022 and participated in the Banff Artist in Residence program in Spring 2022.
Fraser Collins, Boy On Sand, 2019
12.36 x 8.17 inch inkjet print
Edition 1/1
$600
About the artwork: After a morning of surfing, a young boy plays in the sand at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia. He is part of the first Black surf school created in the region to fill the need for increased diversity in the sport, and remove barriers to this experience for the community of North Preston.
Biography: Fraser Collins is a Toronto-based visual artist known for his photography and video work. His art is marked by a sensitivity to identity and culture and seeks to draw viewers into relationships with his subjects and their narrative circumstances. Collins' critical engagement with social issues, ideas about entertainment and about giving voice to people, engages viewers' attention through joy, subversion, ideas of community and the communal, and pictorial density and depth.
Kristiina Lahde, Loop-do-Loop 06, 2020
16.8 x 16.8 inch inkjet print
Edition 2/5 available
$2,000 framed
About the artwork: A rubber band is a circle that’s been twisted or bent. It’s a closed circuit, a path that winds and twists. I found this ordinary rubber band in my home. The bands are so familiar, we know their stretch and texture: how they feel in our hand. I like to give attention to the overlooked. How does close inspection alter our view or experience?
Biography: Kristiina Lahde is an artist from Toronto, Canada. Lahde received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999. Since then, she has been exhibiting across Canada and the USA. Recent exhibitions include at OBORO in Montreal, MKG127 in Toronto and PLAY/GROUND in Medina, NY. Recently, Kristiina’s interview with LA Curator Claudia Pretelin was published at instrumentsofmemory.com. Her works are held in numerous private, corporate and public collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank. In 2022, Kristiina’s work will be featured at the Papier Art Fair in Montreal and Untitled in Miami. Kristiina Lahde is represented by MKG127 in Toronto.
Alvin Luong, Parting Leaves (Spill Over Pictures), 2022
25 x 31 inch inkjet print
Edition 1/2 available
$2,700 unframed
About the artwork: This new series of photographs have been processed to appear as if the inks that compose the images have washed away due to contact with water. The photographs depict mundane scenes in the artist's daily life living in Ho Chi Minh City. The combination of the aesthetic effect of the photographs and their personal nature continue the artist’s concerns for the future of the city and its increasingly severe flooding caused by climate change.
Biography: Alvin Luong works with stories of human migration, land, and dialogues from diasporic working class communities to create artworks that reflect upon historical developments in society and its intimate effects on the lives of people. Luong has shown and screened artworks at the Images Festival (Toronto), Boers-Li Gallery (Beijing), Gudskul (Jakarta), and The Polygon Gallery (Vancouver). The artist has held research and resident artist appointments at the Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing), HB Station Contemporary Art Research Center (Guangzhou), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and Gallery TPW (Toronto).
Anthony Gebrehiwot, Divine Masculine, 2020
30 x 30 inch inkjet print
Editions 1/5 and 2/5 available
$3,555 framed
About the artwork: Divine Masculine (featuring Deshawn Blackwood) focuses on the re-imagining of Black masculinities and identities in contemporary culture. The production and consumption of imagery centred around black men has been narrow and contained. Through my artistic process, I'm offering alternative representations of Black men in a more tender, holistic way.
Biography: Anthony Gebrehiwot is an award winning visual artist, photographer and community leader whose creative lens re-visions photography as an ongoing dialogue of social change between subject and society.
A self-taught artist and photographer, Gebrehiwot founded XvXy-photo in 2014, focusing on studio portraiture. To date, he has worked with several notable brands such as Nike, Royal Bank of Canada, Vice Canada, Absolute, Hudson Bay, The City of Toronto and Linkedin to name a few. His work has been featured in over thirty local and international publications such as the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, PAPER Magazine, Elle UK and Yahoo Lifestyle.
Ryan Van Der Hout, Mikveh, 2022
24 x 24 inch pigment print with rhinestones
Edition 1/9 available
$3,600 framed
About the artwork: Mikveh is part of my Drag series, which looks at my queer becoming through portraits and self-portraits. The series represents the dualities of grief and excitement that can be equally present in transformation: the excitement of becoming and the grief of what is left behind. Mikveh depicts my partner shortly after a self-performed Jewish ritualistic immersion, in which we both fully submerged in a lake to leave behind elements of the past and emerge cleansed. I further rhinestone the photograph, queering the image and creating a veil the viewer must look through to access the image.
Biography: Van Der Hout’s work has been widely featured in publications including The Huffington Post, Vogue Italia, CBC and Reader’s Digest. He has exhibited across Canada, the United Kingdom, and in New York, most notably in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Collectors Series, as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival's primary exhibitions, and in The Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward festival. He has created public art for the Toronto Archives, the TTC, Nuit Blanche, and Pemberton Developments. Van Der Hout was awarded the Emerging Artist Award by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council. He has a BFA in Photography from Toronto Metropolitan University and is a current MFA candidate at Parsons in New York City.
Christopher Katsarov Luna, Lovers Lament, 2018
10 x 8 inch inkjet print
Edition 1/5 available
$500 unframed
About the artwork: The sun falls on my mother's land. My second home. The mausoleum doubles as a lookout over the small coastal Peruvian town, attracting mourners and lovers alike. On that occasion I was both. As I walk down the path leading through the sun-warmed columbarium a lone street dog emerges from a row of graves, a freshly picked rose in its mouth and pining eyes. We catch each other's gaze, startled, and we know that in that moment, we are both mourners and lovers.
Biography: Christopher is a documentary and news photographer based in Toronto, Canada and Lima, Peru. Christopher’s work frequently appears in the Globe and Mail and Canadian Press, among others.
Tizzi Tan, Three Women, 2021
16.25 x 20 inch inkjet print
Edition 2/3 available
$500 framed
About the artwork: In Denglu village (population 100) located in the Southwestern region of China, life flows calmly as water in a stream. Retreating from the pandemic and her urban life, Tan stayed in this remote village for a month, where she was enlightened by rural living: butterflies, birds, scattered wooden houses, and Denglu's residents—all beings living together. In an environment of self-sufficient subsistence, Tan became what Ralph Waldo Emerson called a walking "transparent eyeball." Quietly, Tan wishes to be a tree when she stands tall, a speck of dust when she lays down. At a time when disenchantment becomes the mantra of modernization and penetrates every inch of our lives, Tan seeks to explore the original and symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world.
Biography: Tizzi Tan was born in Yunnan China. She studied visual art at Sheridan College and received an BFA in Photography from OCADU. Currently, she lives and works in Toronto. Tan's art practice is mostly lens-based, but are not confined to any specific medium. She focuses on the subtle perceptions of human activities and explores the meanings of existence under current social conditions.
Sarah Palmer, Florida, 2014
14 x 14 inch inkjet print
Edition 2/5 available
$650 framed
About the artwork: This image photographed in Florida, is part of a long term project on ‘last-chance tourism,’ an industry trend whereby travellers explicitly seek out a destination before it vanishes completely or is altered irreparably. It is my attempt to understand our collective desire to see things before they vanish and the ways we remain indifferent to the human and environmental costs of our wandering impulses.
Biography: Sarah Palmer is a photographer based in Toronto, Canada. Her work straddles the realm of journalism and fine art, questioning the conventional limits that both of these worlds hold for the viewer and artist alike. She explores pop culture and current events with a focus on the subcultures that these gatherings draw in.
She composes multi-frame exposures in camera, with no manipulation in post. By building layers of stories on the same piece of film, she creates a strong sense of environment while weaving together contrasts and similarities in the subject matter she's photographing.