Gallery 44 presents our annual emerging artist showcase, Proof—now in its fourteenth year. Artists are selected from a call for submissions that are culled from across Canada. Artists are chosen on the basis of artistic merit, creating a multiplicity of perspectives. Proof focuses on a broad range of contemporary photo-based practices that concern a new generation of Canadian artists. This year’s artists are Jaret Belliveau (Moncton), Ana Black (Vancouver), Osheen Harruthoonyan (Toronto), Alynne Lavigne (Toronto), Jacynthe Lessard-L (montreal), Scott Massey (Vancouver) and Olga Zotova (Toronto). All seven emerging artists are engaged in the evolution of photographic practices while examining a larger cultural whole. Whether they are investigating isolation, closure and new beginings or the illusive nature of memory, each artist in Proof 14 fearlessly delivers an exciting approach. The selection committee for Proof 14 consisted of former Proof participant Angela Del Buono (Proof 13) and Exhibition Selection Committee members Colin Wiginton, Alice Dixon and Stephanie Rogerson.
Alynne Lavigne’s series NameDropping began with the re-reading of her high school diaries. Faced with the difficult task of reviewing personal history, she saw her diaries both as evidence and as a construction of experience. The act of assembling memory, and in turn forming identity becomes performative through writing. With the potential of an audience, diaries are fodder for multiple interpretations, and that possibility is reflected in this body of work.
Ana Black is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the disconnection between what is represented and what is occurring. Black’s video Petting delves into the ritualized significance of everyday situations by emphasizing the transformative power of a recorded image; the seemingly banal moment becomes heightened into a significant event. Loosely based on the synthesis between observation and memory, this constructed reality explores the struggle for control, longing and desire.
Jacinthe Lessard-L uses pre-manufactured furniture kits such as those made by IKEA as subjects in order to question the place of individuality in living spaces. Individual desires can be made normative with prefabricated homes and modular furniture that create an almost “aesthetic average.” Fascinated by how popular such commercial products have become, Lessard-L examines the effect of design, modernity and mass-production through her artistic practice.
In the wake of their mother’s death, Jaret Belliveau and his brother David travelled across Canada to mark the beginning of a new family dynamic. Throughout Expect Delays, Belliveau photographed David in locations of significant importance to Canadian history. While these images reference snapshot photography and tourism that vernacular is disrupted by the lack of direction David was given to pose.
Family Portrait deals with themes of family relations, gender roles, and societal construction of the family unit. The idea of “putting on a face” for a photograph fascinates Olga Zotova as she questions this convention by actually showing distress and discomfort in her work. Zotova photographed her family while leaving a blank space for herself. Later, she inserted a video clip of herself where her facial expressions and movement strike a profound contrast.
Osheen Harruthoonyan’s haunting images are created by chemically manipulating his photographs and negatives. The large scale images are a mixture of deep blacks and crisp whites that have a disarming effect that is simultaneously nostalgic yet contemporary.
Scott Massey’s series Minor Incidents takes its cue from civic maintenance and engineering workers. Based on tasks such as road patching, crack grinding, graffiti buffs and similar maintenance duties, the works in Minor Incidents play on notions of artistic maintenance within the built environment. Just as the operations of sanctioned maintenance crews are often unnoticed, this “artistic maintenance” is likewise subtle and transitionary.
Alynne Lavigne is a Toronto based artist with a BFA in Photography from Ontario College of Art and Design. She completed a Self-Directed Study in Florence, Italy in 2005. Alynne has shown in several group exhibits in Florence and Toronto, including Drift/Draft, A Partners in Art Fundraising Exhibition and Art in the Fall at 401 Richmond.
Ana Black is a Vancouver based multidisciplinary artist. Black studied at the University of British Columbia, the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts, Paris, France, and graduated with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Black was a 2004 fellow at the Photography Institute at Columbia University, New York. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally and has been archived at the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She has been the recipient of several national and international awards.
Jacinthe Lessard-L is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal. In 2006, she completed her MFA at Concordia University. Her work addresses issues of aesthetics in contemporary dwelling spaces, and notions of home and mediation in our everyday lives. Her projects span various media, including video, photography, installation, and performative actions. Her work has shown in several group exhibitions across Quebec as well as in such recent solo shows as at the Occurrence Galerie d’Art in Montreal with her collaborator, Eduardo Ralickas and PETIT GUIDE D’ASSEMBLAGE at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse in Montreal.
Jaret Belliveau graduated from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in April 2006 with a BFA in photography. In 2005, Jaret was selected by the Musee de L’Elysee for an exhibition entitled reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow. To accompany this travelling exhibition; a book of the same title was published by Thames & Hudson and Aperture. Most recently Jaret’s series, Familial Endurance was featured in two books published by Magenta Foundation. Also in 2005, Jaret received a scholarship to produce a photographic exhibition entitled Expect Delays. This body of work documents the journey Jaret and his brother David took across Canada in the wake of their mother’s death. His most recent documentary follows a group of teenagers over a period of three years. The Dirt Squad will be featured at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in an exhibition entitled Recent Discoveries.
Olga Zotova was born in Moscow and immigrated to Canada in 1996. Olga is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. In 2006, Lisa Smith curated her work in a show entitled The Displace Show at the OCAD Student Gallery. In May 2006, she received the Mark McCain Tuition Scholarship—the highest scholarship awarded by the Faculty of Art at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Osheen Harruthoonyan currently lives and works in Toronto as a photographer and filmmaker. Drawing upon his rich experiences living in Tehran, Athens and Vancouver, he addresses subjects of memory and the deconstructive process of time. His black and white prints are created and printed by alternative processes achieved in a traditional wet darkroom. Osheen is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Scott Massey lives and works in Vancouver, BC. He graduated from the photography program at the Emily Carr University of Art & Design. Massey’s work typically explores the confluence of art and science whereby he accentuates and amplifies natural phenomena, often heightened through artificial means or via slight manipulations. Light as a medium figures heavily in his work, which derives out of research into areas of quantum physics, cosmology, astronomy,and other scientific disciplines. Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include Unstable Ground (Burnaby Art Gallery, 2015); Light Adjustments (Dazibao, Montreal, 2014/15); Let's Reach c Together (Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver, 2013); Topologies and Limits (CSA Space, Vancouver, 2011). His work has also been included in group shows in Canada and abroad at Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Denmark, 2013); Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2012); the Columbus College of Art+Design (Ohio, 2007); and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival (Toronto, 2007).
