May
24th – June 15th,
2014
Reception: Saturday, May 24th, 2- 5PM
Q&A: Sunday May 25th, 2PM
Adrian Fish
The Aquaphilia Project: Part III
The
third iteration of The Aquaphilia Project documents the
behind-the-scenes machinations of the Georgia Aquarium - the world’s second
largest by volume, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Through increasingly advanced
technologies, the consequence of sustained attempts at transfixing attention is
not only confusion between what is real versus what is convincingly
represented, but also our preference for and addiction to illusion. By attempting to convincingly represent a
‘natural’ ecosystem, the simulacrum lies within aquarium-goers who, by virtue
of paying admission, tacitly support an easily digested model of reality.
Adrian Fish’s photographic practice
documents the physical and psychic spaces integral to the habituation to 21st
century life. Employing the visual
vocabulary of anthropology, Fish’s images are the product of casting a
decidedly unscientific gaze on the spheres of education, recreation, and
entertainment through architecture and portraiture.
Adrian Fish is a Toronto-born
photo-based artist and educator currently living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He holds an MFA from York University, as well
as undergraduate accreditation from OCAD University in Toronto and the Sheridan
Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville, ON. His work has been shown nationally at
numerous public institutions, artist-run centres, and commercial galleries in
cities such as Calgary, Halifax, Hamilton, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg, as
well as internationally in Atlanta GA, Brooklyn, NY, Chelsea, NY, Columbus, OH,
Lishui City, China and Tokyo, Japan. He
is currently Associate Professor in the Division of Media Art at NSCAD
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is represented by loop
Gallery in Toronto and Hermes Gallery in Halifax.
Learn more about Adrian
Fish’s work during a Q & A session on Sunday May 25th @
2PM with artist Jenn Law, moderated by loop Gallery director,
Stephanie D’Amico.
The Aquaphilia Project: Part III is programmed
as part of the Scotiabank CONTACT photography festival.
Jenn Law
Library
Inspired in part by Jorge Luis Borges’ contention
that a book is “an axis of innumerable relationships”, Law continues her
examination of print culture, bibliophilia, and textuality through the close
material readings of several key books in her personal library. Working with
hand-cut and altered found books, 3-D printed objects and lithographically
printed illustrations, Law endeavours to tease out the links between the
literal and the literary, the linguistic and the visual, engaging the familiar
tropes of lightness and weight and their association with the making of meaning
through material practice.
In both writing and drawing, the line is considered
as both a technically rendered material trace and a conceptual conduit, capable
of demarcating boundaries, drawing connections, and creating
illusions. The line simultaneously reveals and conceals
meaning. In Library, the outline of the book acts as
frame and lure, drawing us into a promise of some truth or other, so often
assumed of the published, bound and printed text. In the face of
contemporary debates surrounding the purported crisis in print culture, Law
contemplates the future of the book, our fetishization and attachment to its
physical object-form, and our desire to collect and possess the knowledge
contained therein. A ravenous and ever-growing collection, the
library as a living archive – both bibliographic and biographic – exceeds its
material boundaries, facilitating and revealing the connections of books, ideas
and readers across time and space.
Jenn
Law is an artist, writer and researcher
living in Toronto. She is the Chair of Open Studio, where she works in print media, hand-cut
paper and book work. Law holds a PhD in
Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the
University of London, England, a BA in Anthropology from McGill University and
a BFA from Queen’s University. She has worked as a lecturer, editor
and curator in Canada, the UK and South Africa, and has published on South
African, Caribbean and Canadian contemporary art and print
culture. Law has shown her work internationally and has received
numerous fellowships, grants and awards for her research, including from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the British
Council and the British Academy.
