PROOF 13
July 13 – August 12, 2006
Opening Reception: Thursday July 13, 6 - 9 PM

For the thirteenth year, Gallery 44 presents PROOF, our annual emerging artist showcase, selected from a pan-Canadian call for submissions. Chosen on the basis of artistic merit rather than an over-riding theme, PROOF highlights a spectrum of contemporary photographic subjects and approaches to the medium, concerning a new generation of Canadian artists. This years Proof participants: Darren Cerkownyk (Toronto), Julia Dault (Toronto), AngelA Del Buono (Toronto), Joel Herman (Toronto), Katherine Lannin (Stratford), Linh Gia Ly (Calgary) and Faith Moosang (Vancouver) all demonstrate the unique emerging talent of Canadian photo-based artists.

Darren Cerkownyk (Toronto, ON) Abandonment and Security Series, 2005

Darren Cerkownyk’s Abandonment and Security Series are portraits of solitude, involving issues of loss, separation and attachment. Domestic objects are singled out and displaced into dark, unknown spaces accentuating feelings of abandonment. Each object becomes representative of the body, and the dark surrounding space the solitude in which we experience loss.

Darren Cerkownyk recently received his BFA from the Ontario College of
Art & Design in photography. He has exhibited in group shows throughout Toronto at the Edward Day Gallery, Gallery One, and Lennox Contemporary. Darren has received numerous awards including the OCAD Photography Faculty Award, Dr. Eugene A. Poggetto Award, and the Cylla von Tiedemann Award among others. Darren currently works and resides in Toronto.


Julia Dault (Toronto, ON) Animal Kingdom, 2005

In her Animal Kingdom series, Julia Dault interacts with historical drawings in order to examine themes surrounding objectification. She is at once curious explorer, encountering these animals for the first time and yet simultaneously threatening with hand actions such as grasping, capturing, strangling, and stroking. Out of Dault’s photographic interaction with these animals and insects arises a social commentary on the process of exploration and colonial history.

Julia Dault is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She writes a weekly visual arts column in the National Post called At the Galleries and publishes regularly in various other national magazines. In September 2006, she will begin her MFA at Parsons in New York.


AngelA del Buono (Toronto, ON) Ends series, 2005

AngelA Del Buono’s Ends series looks at aging and loss within a confined space. These images capture the transition of a personal home to an empty house. The house is a quiet metaphor for the human body; the walls and paint like skin, aging and molding. The empty hangers suggest bare bones; the bulk of the furniture connotes an empty shell, a vacancy of the spirit.

AngelA Del Buono has spent the past several years capturing themes of loss and abandonment. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design, AngelA’s work has regularly been exhibited as part of the Contact Toronto Photography Festival. AngelA will be starting work on her Masters of Fine Arts at York University this fall.



Joel Herman (Toronto, ON) A Brief History of Painting, 2002-ongoing

Joel Herman’s series A Brief History of Painting largely relies on the act of performance and mimicry. As we imagine Herman searching the urban landscape for paint spills, he references art history, psychoanalysis, the use of chance, and the mark-making desire to verify existence. Herman’s practice revolves around the questioning of what is original, what is art, what is painting, and what is photography.

Joel Herman was born in Saskatchewan in 1981, and completed his BFA at the University of Victoria in 2004, where he was the recipient of the Helen Pitt Award. Recent exhibitions in Canada include WRKS DVSN, Vancouver (2005); Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver (2005); Open Space, Victoria (2004); and Rogue Art, Victoria (2003). He lives and works in Toronto.


Katherine Lannin (Stratford, ON) The Pile Project, 2005

Katherine Lannin’s Pile Project disrupts the accustomed mode of surveying a room by interfering with the norms of expected design and order. Lannin has engaged in stacking the contents of each room; her interference with the objects and the space they inhabit creates narrative and new meanings. By overturning the contents of these rooms, Lannin has removed associations with the usual function of each object, thus creating sculptural pieces.

Katherine Lannin began her career in visual arts in Windsor Ontario, where she graduated from the university with a Bachelor in Fine Arts. Since then she has gone on to finish a Masters of Fine Art at the Slade School in London, England. She has exhibited in Canada, Europe and the United States. Currently she lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; where she is collaborating on several projects with the National Gallery of Honduras and the Honduran Institute of Interamerican Culture.

Linh Gia Ly (Calgary, AB) Blinking and Tapestries, 2005

Linh Gia Ly’s photographic tapestry Snowy Scandals from the series blinking and Tapestries merges together the craft of tapestry production with snapshot photography. Ly’s tapestries are an ode to the digital images that exist only in a pixel no-place. These many moments in time that are missing and remain unprinted are now woven together to create a web of time and place. The tapestry references the present, memories past, and the forgotten.

Linh Ly studied drawing and photography from the University of Calgary. Since graduating, she has been actively exhibiting in artist-run centres and public galleries. Select exhibitions include: Truck, Stride, the Glenbow Museum, Alternator Gallery and Canada Quay in Toronto. She has been published in Canadian Architect Magazine, Coupe Magazine, and Spur Magazine and has received grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Canada Council.


Faith Moosang (Vancouver, BC) March to May, 2004


Faith Moosang’s series March to May examines the construction of time and place within the representation of war. These images are a study of the television coverage, from the time when the bombing of Baghdad commenced, to the declaration of victory by George Bush (20 March -1 May, 2003). Using long exposure times, the images are abstracted to the point that time and place become arbitrary and the differences between enemy and ally become obscured.

Faith Moosang is a photographic artist who lives and works in Vancouver. She received her BFA from Emily Carr and her MFA from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Her current interest, rephotography, is being used in a now unfolding work about the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.