Proof 11
Jul 15- Aug 14
Opening Thurs, Jul 15, 6-8
Christine D’Onofrio, Michel Hébert, Melanie Ibadlit, Su-Ying Lee, Nikki Middlemiss, Lindsay Page, Alison Skyrme

Christine D’Onofrio, February 2003

In wondering about proof and puddings, who better to turn to than the know-it-all butler Jeeves (Ask Jeeves, http://www.ask.com), who wisely directed me to the Word Detective.1 There I found that the phrase "the proof is in the pudding," is actually derived from the original English proverb: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Dating from circa 1600, it quite simply means that the true value or quality of a thing can only be judged when it is put to use.

Beyond judging British cooking, "proof" is also a photographic term whereby an artist examines the quality of the image – exposure, composition, etc. Gallery 44's annual PROOF exhibition, highlighting emerging Canadian photographic artists, provides another kind of evidence, that of a country bursting with photographic talent. An exhibition which foregrounds new ideas and approaches rather than any over-riding theme, the artists featured in Proof 11: Michel Hébert (Montreal), Melanie Ibadlit (Toronto), Christine D'Onofrio (Vancouver), Su-Ying Lee (Mississauga), Nikki Middlemiss (Montreal), Lindsay Page (Toronto), and Alison Skyrme (Toronto), demonstrate the range and depth of this talent. From Lindsay Page's appropriated and twisted photo-constructions to Nikki Middlemiss's quiet and minimalist compositions, Canadian artists continue to mine the rich and divergent possibilities this medium provides.

Last but not least, PROOF closes our exhibition season, but remains one of the highlights of Gallery 44's programme. What better way to end the year than to present the true value of Canadian artists through this rich visual feast, whetting our appetites and leaving us to look forward to this country's promising photographic future.

Christine D'Onofrio

"Panties, hair, and cosmetics are a few of the products assembled in my work, chosen for their prominent (and sometimes overwhelming) use in visual culture. These materials also resemble fragments of the body, and reference a specific notion of femininity. The products directly reference a conventional feminine representation, such as long hair, red nails, or lacy undergarments, yet they are not in their usual mode of representation. The familiar is transformed into new animated figures. This relates to identity formation, wherein it is difficult to separate culturally constructed femininity from the biological, ‘authentic’ female."

February 2003, D'Onofrio's minimalist photographic installation tracing the patterns of human hair (her own) and water droplets remaining on a shower’s tiled surface, offers a space for quiet contemplation. Although we don’t see her body, we are left with delicate traces of her presence through strands of hair, left here and there, like calligraphic strokes. As in other works where D'Onofrio isolates fragments of feminine adornment such as lipstick and panties, these details leave us to consider the absent (but implied) female body beyond cultural constructions. These images remind us that we are united in our most basic physical elements, hair and water, and in our need to be accepted for who we are.

Lindsay Page

Lindsay Page, Winter, 2003

"There is a search here, a continuous, ever-changing search, in which the object is constantly revised, updated, transformed. We search for each other, for understanding, for answers. When the answers elude us and we can no longer define the quest, we wait. From here to advance, to step in and focus on the quest itself. The shifting object we strive to attain; to understand and be understood, to reach each other, to connect. Yet every attempt results in a certain degree of failure. It’s impossible to ever truly know another, because it’s impossible to fully reveal ourselves. Yet this is what we strive for continuously, to escape the boundary of our skin and penetrate a reality not our own."

Lindsay Page takes ordinary human forms and places them in extraordinary mixed media constructions. Cutting, piling, dissecting, Page's constructions are at once humorous, sardonic, and sad, transporting us to a place of dream-like and child-like play. The emotions generated by these images range from an overwhelming feeling of pathos for the human condition to the sweet taste of revenge.

Su-Ying Lee

Su-Ying Lee, Family on Heritage Drive, from the Untitled Series, 2003

"Consistently present throughout my life has been the lens of my father's 35mm camera creating a profusion of family photographs. His family/our family in various configurations, locations, times and spaces. When I look at these pictures I see through the photographer's eye and lens. I experience the forms and compositions he chose. My sight is even framed by the shared course of events that have naturally and unnaturally occurred in our family. As is often the way, here looking is related to finding. Searching images, like evidence, for recollection and recognition, I find that truth can be unstable, shifting in perpetuity with its believer."

Isolating and spot-lighting small gestures from family photographs taken by her father, Su-Ying Lee focuses our attention on the mundane gestures of daily life pointing to unspoken clues contained within the photograph. Lee's photos present us with a deeper way of looking, revealing a desire to connect and understand beyond the barriers of time, language, and generational differences.

Alison Skyrme

Alison Skyrme, Path, 2002

"I am preoccupied with the issues of time in photography and, over the past few years, I have shot much of my work outdoors at night . . . . While the land appears unchanging in our shortsighted view, it is in fact in constant flux. By moving closer and isolating small sections of the landscape, the slight changes and fluctuations within it are magnified. With each five-minute exposure, the image captures the slow transformations: the sway of a branch, the progress of an insect across a leaf, or the clouds across the sky, that represent in minuscule, how the landscape evolves, is damaged, and repairs itself."

The photographs of Alison Skyrme point us to a way of re-examining nature. Abstracted in black and white and shot in close proximity in total darkness with a flash-light, these long exposures capture the richness of texture and the miracle of form. Life, in each of its cycles, unfolds all around us, its mysteries contained and revealed with the darkness and light of each day.

Nikki Middlemiss

Nikki Middlemiss, Skylines

"Contemporary urban culture is characterized by a collective aspiration to anonymity. Consequentially, residential architecture is designed…to respect inhabitants’ desires to privacy. I am particularly interested in the manner in which changing trends in residential construction have contributed to a distinctive urban climate. For instance, turn-of-the-century row houses built for a working class population are now marketed as luxury condominiums while the high-rise apartment, once a symbol of modernity and power, has become associated with social isolation and urban decay."

In a crowded urban environment, Nikki Middlemiss finds space to breathe and reflect. Amidst the chaos, she isolates minimal, elegant forms, which remind us that at the basis of everything there is some type of geometric order—one the artist’s discerning eye can isolate and bring forth to us for contemplation.

Melanie Ibadlit

"There are moments when you cannot utter a word because your thoughts are muddled with many possibilities. There is an unrelenting silence in the air, yet you are assembling the words in your mind. Clutter lingers. Perhaps you no longer think of the question in mind, but an answer—any answer. These are the seconds, minutes, perhaps the hours, or the days, where we want to conjure the right words for the right moment…we feverishly deliberate because we all simply want to understand, and moreover, be understood."

Melanie Ibadlit’s series Muster is a reflection on the restrictions of language and communication. Here the physical and the psychological, which comprise internal and external spaces, are elegantly presented as head and shoulders images floating within a broad sweep of negative space. We are left to contemplate the tension within this relationship, between the internal forces, which formulate language, and the external world, which absorbs and reflects it back.

Michel Hébert

Michel Hébert, What do you suggest?, 2001-3 (clips from various video works)

"Que voulez-vous dire? (What do you suggest?) is what one might call a video collage. In light of the works of French writer Georges Perec, this work proposes that objects of all kinds, including one’s possessions, as well as stills, sounds, and animated images, are all relevant and significant in the making of a portrait; perhaps even more so than one’s personal history. This proposition rests on the assumption that our sensorial and discursive powers, by all means and at all times, are capable of carrying and simultaneously managing a far greater collection of references, images, words and sounds than one would think, so as to compose a complex, obsessive imaginary world."

In Michel Hébert’s series of video self-portraits What do you suggest?, rapidly moving layers of images, appropriated sounds, and film clips form a rich imaginary world of the conscious and unconscious mind. In their accumulation, these short videos begin to build a portrait encompassing longing, desire, fear, and obsession. Perhaps best reflected in Boy on a Train, these videos encompass an anxious compulsion to propel into the future, while at the same attempting to reconcile the inescapable memories of the past.

- Sara Angelucci, Director, Gallery 44

1 The Word Detective, www.word-detective.com, Issue: August 11, 2000.

Biographies

Michel Hébert is a Montreal artist, working primarily in video since 1998. In 2003 Hébert
received a master’s degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Besides pursuing a solo career as a visual artist, he has worked in theater as a scenographer and as a documentary videographer for a Belgian theatre troop on tour in Romania. His next video installation is scheduled for exhibition in November 2004 at Articule in Montreal.

Melanie Ibadlit was born in Toronto in 1979 and recently graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in photography. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at Propeller Centre for the Arts, Prefix Gallery and OCAD Gallery. Melanie continues to work and reside in Toronto.

Su-Ying Lee studied Art and Art History at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Working primarily in the mediums of photography, video, and textile-based sculptures, a reoccurring theme in her work has been attachment/detachment. Most recently, her site-specific collaboration with artist Christopher Arnoldin, entitled A maze in grace was on exhibit as part of the Wade project in a public wading pool in June of 2004. Su-Ying is one half of the Curatorial collective Self Service.

Nikki Middlemiss received her BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Ottawa in 1999. She has exhibited in Regina, Ottawa, and Montréal, including solo exhibitions at Gallery 101 (2001) and le Centre des arts actuels Skol (2002). Nikki presently lives in Montréal.Christine D'Onofrio

Born in 1978 in Toronto, Christine D'Onofrio lives and works in Vancouver. D'Onofrio's photographic practice focuses on identity and the body, focusing on constructions and representations of femininity. Her latest works utilize feminine products such as panties and cosmetics. By re-staging these objects in the studio, she tests notions of femininity and explores their influence in informing identity. Having recently completed her MFA at the University of British Columbia, following her BFA at York University in Toronto, D'Onofrio is now actively involved in exhibiting her work. In addition, she teaches foundation studio at the University of British Columbia.

Lindsay Page is a Toronto photo-based artist. She is a recent graduate of Ryerson University and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Ted Rogers Scholarship (2002) and the Roloff Beny Foundation France Study Abroad Award (2003). She acted as co-editor of Function (2003), an annual independent publication showcasing the work of emerging artists at the School of Image Arts, Ryerson University. Her work has been exhibited in Toronto at venues including the Ryerson Gallery, Gallery TPW, The Photo Passage, Luft Gallery and Lee Ka-sing Gallery. Her work has appeared in Walrus Magazine (Nov. 2003) and Definiti Magazine (Nov. 2003). In September 2004 she will commence an MFA program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Alison Skyrme was born in Burlington, Ontario. She came to Toronto in 1998 and received her BFA in Photography Studies from Ryerson University in 2002. She has since been exhibiting in group shows in the Toronto area. Her work centers around a preoccupation with time and its effects on memory and physical life.