Elisabeth Belliveau, Studies for Pure Movement, video still, 2019.

Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
FALL PROGRAMMING

Alone in the house (Still life with Clarice Lispector)
Elisabeth Belliveau

Exhibition Dates: September 11 – October 24, 2020
Online Artist Talk: October 3, 2020 12:00PM ET

It wasn’t until she tried reading Clarice Lispector for the second time that the author’s work really resonated with – and influenced the work of – Edmonton based artist Elisabeth Belliveau. Like Lispector, Belliveau is interested in exploring the material, flexible nature of time. While Lispector builds her worlds with words, Belliveau creates hers through sculpture, stop motion animation and more recently, lenticular prints. Still lifes form the foundation of her practice where found materials, clay creatures and 3D-printed objects breathe amongst growing and disintegrating flowers and fruit; time transforms, decays and is reborn. The narratives created through the meticulous work of stop motion upend the traditional tropes of still lifes; the artist imbues her scenes with a ripening feminism, where it appears that a spell has been cast on objects and viewers a-like.

Presented in partnership with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Email heather@gallery44.org if you would like to attend the artist talk. Registered attendees will receive a link to join the event.

Elisabeth Belliveau (b. Antigonish NS) is an artist and published author of four graphic novels. She completed a BFA at Alberta University of the Arts, an MFA at Concordia University Montréal, and currently teaches at MacEwan University on Treaty 6 Territory ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ – Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton AB. Her work explores contemporary still life primarily through stop-motion animation and sculpture. She has attended residencies at Banff Centre, WSW NY, Tokyo Wondersite, RAVI-Belgium, ONF/NFB, Youkobo and Studio Kura Japan. Screenings include Studio44 Stockholm and Eyeworks Experimental Animation Festival in Brooklyn, LA, and Chicago. Recent Exhibitions include Processor at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Momenta Biennale de Montréal, and the Prince Takamado Gallery – Canadian Embassy in Tokyo Japan.

Jennifer Ray, Found Sculpture, 2019.

In Range
Jennifer Ray

Exhibition Dates: September 11 – October 24, 2020

(Vitrines)

Jennifer Ray’s ongoing project In Range is documentation of objects found at open shooting ranges in the United States – improvised targets that have been abandoned, leaving traces of their previous owners. The found objects are manipulated, treated as sculptural material, and photographed on-site in a manner that mimics in-studio photography. The choice of targets reveals a pleasure in destruction that Ray finds simultaneously disturbing and understandable. Her arrangements draw on the real as well as the implied, connecting the present to the historical trajectory of gun violence in the United States. By not photographing the shooters themselves, Ray seeks to look beyond matters of demographics, to the more fundamental reasons for the country’s obsession. Interested in how unresolved strains of fear, anger, inequality, and hatred undergird the preoccupation with guns, the artist’s photographs exude tension through the collapsing of aesthetics and implicit violence.

Jennifer Ray is a Wichita-based artist and educator. She received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College and BA in Studio Art from Oberlin College.

A Few Howls Again
Silvia Kolbowski

Exhibition Dates: October 31 – December 12, 2020
Making Arguments in Space: A Curatorial Workshop: November 18, 2020 6:00PM

Silvia Kolbowski: A Few Howls Again presents film and photographic works by Argentine-born New York-based artist Silvia Kolbowski. Kolbowski’s research-based visual and textual practice addresses questions of temporality, historicization, political resistance, and the unconscious. In this exhibition, video, collage and installation work by the artist examine contemporary issues around political narrativization and power structures through historical figures and film history. This exhibition will create a space to nurture the multiple dialogues embedded in Kolbowski’s practice and explore its capacious ability to gesture outward to our present political moment. In collaboration with the artist, the curators have selected fragments from Kolbowski’s archive that frame both the broad and personal stakes of her work. As Kolbowski is also a prolific writer on art and politics, A Few Howls Again will extend into written word through the inclusion of selected texts.

Curated by Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe, Jared Quinton and Magdalyn Asimakis.

Silvia Kolbowski is a time-based media artist who addresses questions of historicization, political resistance, and the unconscious. The structures of spectatorship—psychical and political—are a central concern of all her projects. Her work has been exhibited in many contexts, including The Taipei Biennial, The Whitney Biennial, and The Hammer Museum.

Envision
OUTREACH Online

Exhibition Dates: July 24 – October 24, 2020

OUTREACH Online: Envision is an online exhibition showcasing the works of youth artists aged 13-26 residing within the GTA. In response to the current pandemic, Gallery 44 invited young artists to share what they have been creating, reflecting on, exploring, monitoring, and engaging with to capture the diverse experiences and feelings incited by COVID-19. In addition to providing a snapshot of the pandemic realities, this exhibition encourages participants and viewers to envision a world post-pandemic and all of its utopian and dystopian possibilities. View the online exhibition here.

Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography is a charitable, non-profit, artist-run centre committed to supporting multi-faceted approaches to photography and lens-based media. Founded in 1979 to establish a supportive environment for the development of artistic practice, Gallery 44’s mandate is to provide a context for meaningful reflection and dialogue on contemporary photography.

Gallery 44 is committed to programs that reflect the continuously changing definition of photography by presenting a wide range of practices that engage timely and critical explorations of the medium. Through exhibitions, public engagement, education programs and production facilities our objective is to explore the artistic, cultural, historic, social and political implications of the image in our ever-expanding visual world.

Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
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Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8
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Maegan Broadhurst
Head of Communications and Development
maegan@gallery44.org
416.979.3941 ext.4