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On View January 17 - April 4, 2010
Water Mark
prints by
GERARD BRENDER À BRANDIS
BRIAN HOLDEN
LUCINDA JONES
Drowning Ophelia
new media, video, photography, painting, and sculptural works by
JANET BELLOTTO
JOHN DICKSON
JANIETA EYRE
SUE LLOYD
PAULETTE PHILLIPS
MÉLANIE ROCAN
SHARON SWITZER
Gallery Stratford presents the openings of WATER MARK and DROWNING OPHELIA, each a group exhibition comprised of works by artists who examine the role of water from varying perspectives. The images in these exhibitions blur the lines between scientific realism and romantic contextualization, illuminating the expansive interrelationships that exist in both historical and contemporary landscapes.
WATER MARK is composed of works by three artists who explore the Grand River and the surrounding organic environments, exploring the appearance of water in the natural world and its contemporary representation in an array of print making techniques and styles. Gerard Brender à Brandis’ work Water: the Great Giver and the Great Taker-Away, presented here derives from a series of images of the Grand River. Brian Holden’s series Water in the Wilderness: Northwestern Ontario comes from his fascination not only with landscape, which is a prominent component in many of his images, but also from the structures and forms found in the many varieties of organic life. In Experiencing Water, Lucinda Jones’ approach to evoking underwater scenes viewed during aquatic passage recalls Islamic Art, where repeated patterns and forms constitute an infinite pattern that extends beyond the visible material world.
DROWNING OPHELIA poses several questions such as: How do artists tell stories in their work? How does contemporary art reflect and reveal narrative traditions? How does the art of today record and describe the world around us? And must ‘the real’ be fictionalized in order to be thought?
This group show delves into the timely and timeless allegory of Ophelia’s loss of judgment and her subsequent watery demise in an exhibition of new media, video, photography, painting, and sculptural works by these contemporary artists, provoking an exploration and analysis of the influence of water in our time, as well as the possibilities and potentialities found throughout literature and art.
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