Natural Artifice
Elinor Whidden and 12 Point Buck
January 8 – February 13, 2010
Opening reception: Friday, January 8, 6 - 9 pm
Artists’ talk: Friday, January 8, 6 pm
Gallery 44 begins the year 2010 with a distinctly Canadian exhibition called Natural Artifice, featuring photography and installation by Toronto artist Elinor Whidden, paired with video projection and print-based landscape dioramas by 12 Point Buck, a collaborative duo from Lethbridge, Alberta. These artists construct wry imagery to emphasize the disconnections between our representation of nature, our experience of nature, and nature itself.
Elinor Whidden considers the notion of progress by likening the promises of today’s off-road automobile advertising to those of the Canada’s Western Frontier when the fur trade first blazed its trails into the wilderness. Her photo series Ford EXPLORER captures Whidden’s car-carrying performances in which she endeavours to use car parts as survival tools in the wilds of Northern Ontario.
12 Point Buck comprises artists Leila Armstrong and Chai Duncan, who play with pop depictions of wildlife in their art to highlight the artifice of such representations, which make wild animals look cute and cuddly, and essential ecosystems appear trivial. This incongruity is portrayed in their video projection Deer Me, which follows a creature in a deer mask and wolf skin coat as it carries itself awkwardly through the coulees of an Albertan terrain.
Dayna McLeod in her essay on the exhibitions writes, “We have boiled down the natural world into simplified terms that permit the exploitation of the land and mediate our experience of what is nature.” For Danya McLeod’s full essay from the exhibition’s accompanying catalog, please visit www.gallery44.org
Elinor Whidden received a BA in Canadian/Environmental Studies from Trent University, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a MFA from the State University of New York in Buffalo. She has exhibited throughout North America, recently showing work in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Buffalo, NY.
12 POINT BUCK has been working collaboratively for two years. They have shown their work at the Toronto Urban Film Festival, Parlour in Lethbridge and worked in situ at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Chai Duncan holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan and is currently on staff at the University of Lethbridge. Leila Armstrong acquired an MA in Media Studies from Concordia University and went on to do doctoral studies in communications at Simon Fraser University.
Elinor Whidden’s, Georgian Bay from the series Ford EXPLORER, c-print 76 x 114 cm, 2009
12 POINT BUCK, Deer Me (production still), 2008
Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography is a non-profit artist-run centre committed to the advancement of photographic art. Founded in 1979, the centre consists of a gallery, resource centre, and production facilities. Gallery 44 is supported by its members and patrons, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 120
www.gallery44.org
