Category Archives: Photography

1950, 2008, 2009, All Entries, All Series, All Works, Appropriation, Installation, Performance, Photography, Rephotography

Nude and Draped Figure Studies by the artist and his father, c.1950/2008-09

Nude and Draped Figure Studies by the artist and his father, c.1950/2008-09

Another pseudo-collaboration between the artist and his father, where nude studies made by the artist’s father in the 1950s are the source material for a period re-creation. In the finished installation of this work, the images made by the artist in the present were displayed with ones made by his father in the past, as if made by the same person at the same time and place. The artist’s intention was to create an anachronism. This project is the second time that the artists has used his father’s amateur photography and consider both projects to be collaborations with his father despite the 50-60 years difference and his very limited involvement. These projects follow a lineage of conceptual themes considered by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince probing the idea of originality and authorship in the work of art, but pushes further to consider the uncertain and unexpected roles that certain and unavoidable relations, such as those of family, time and history, might play.

2009, All Entries, All Series, All Works, Appropriation, Painting, PaintingPhotography, Photography

Flashers, 2009 (series)

Flashers, 2009 (series)

The series Flashers examines self-representation nude selfies found online. Each of them was taken in the mirror with flash, resulting in overexposed area that obscures the identity of the subject. 
Collectively, the images are a testament to the change that aesthetics, photography and sexuality have undergone due to the development of digital photography and the Internet.

The artist approaches this material in a way that reflects these shifts: he experiments with printing on the back of expired photographic paper and works over the still-wet pigment ink using a paintbrush. This results in a unique (un-duplicable) image that is faint and distorted, and resembles a painting, while remaining fundamentally a photograph. The substrate’s watermark, which reads “KODAK PROFESSIONAL PAPER”, once the proud hallmark of Kodak’s analog photographic legacy, remains visible in the overexposure.

Installation view, Flashers at Restricted, Monte Clark Gallery
2005, All Entries, All Series, All Works, Captures, Photography

Ginseng Root Studies, 2005 (series)

Installation view, Painting Photography, Monte Clark Gallery, Toronto

Ginseng Root Studies, 2005 (series)

This series features individual studies of 36 different ginseng roots, an herb used in traditional Chinese medicine and by other cultures. These captures are inspired by the botanical specimen photographs of Karl Blossfeldt. It is said that Ginseng Roots resemble the human form, especially in their dried, withered form. Through the scanning process, they come alive, suggesting people, animals and other creatures.

This project has been adapted for a permanent public artwork at River Park Place, Richmond, BC in 2016.

installation view of Again and Again and Again… Serial Formats and Repetitive Actions, exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery, May 12 to September 3, 2012
Image courtesy Rachel Topham/VAG

2006, All Entries, All Series, All Works, Installation, Photography, Video

Manual Labour, 2006

Installation view, Manual Labour, Richmond Art Gallery

Manual Labour, 2006

Manual Labour is a video loop comprised of black and white still images depicting an elderly labourer at work and rest at a residential construction site in east Vancouver. The silent procession of images is interrupted briefly when the homeowners arrive for a site visit. The video loop has been exhibited as a projection, and installed in the window of a door to a gallery that remained closed for the duration of the exhibition.

2012, All Entries, All Series, All Works, Appropriation, Collage, in progress, Photography

Phoropter Studies, 2012 (series), photo

Phoropter Studies, 2012 (series)

photo-collage, 15 images, edition of 3, 10.25 x 10.25 inches

Phoropter Studies is a series of photo-collage works made using studies of vintage optometry instruments to explore vision and optics. The artist, who has worn glasses for most of his life, began collecting phoropters, a device used by optometrists to measure vision. The works have a disorienting three-dimensional quality, which was further explored in the sculpture.