"In The clearest image, Colin Miner enlists the feral hog to give thought to notions of migration, refuge and patterns of disturbance—geospatial, historical and ideological. Uprooted beings uprooting the ground under their feet, the hogs hint at states of unfixedness, a perpetual questioning, a deep historical (colonial) malaise. How to inhabit Earth, and occupy space without living from conquest and expropriation? What should be done to this post-imperial, post-industrial landscape, if we must inhabit it? Referencing the animal's ceaseless rooting behaviour, an innate source of self-soothing and a way to scrounge for subsistence, Miner points to methods for apprehending the anxious future promised by the current systems and powers in place. Comprising both photographic and moving images, sculptural armatures, bright neon afterimages and interventions onto the walls of the gallery, Miner's works coalesce into an arrangement where transient narratives are slowly revealed to the unsettled, vigilant viewer. Here, we too are bodies attuned to unpredictability."
—Excerpt from The buried image, an essay by writer and independent curator Laura Demers. Read the full essay here.
View digital project The sinking image by Colin Miner on G44 Digital.
Content notice:
This exhibition contains a troubling image discovered in an out-of-date photography manual in the Gallery 44 library. Initially used as a piece of propaganda, the image was repurposed as a teaching tool, unsettlingly divorced from its original context.
Presented in partnership with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
The fugitive and cyclical are ongoing departure points for Colin Miner, whose practice takes form through arrangements of objects and images. Notable exhibitions include The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; 2nd Kamias Triennial, The Philippines; Beijing Center of Art, China. Responsive projects have developed from research into non-human subjectivity at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Treaty 7 Territory; Tambopata National Reserve, Peru; Sloth Island, Guyana; and La Datcha, Berlin. They co-edit moire.ca and facilitate the experimental project space Moire’s Catwalk. Studies on the ontological anxiety of photography lead to a PhD at Western University.
