May 2018 - Toronto ON
This year CONTACT expands its scope across Toronto and presents a broad spectrum of physically and conceptually engaging forms of photography. In keeping with this commitment to multiplicity, the 2018 Festival catalogue cover has been produced as a series of four, with each one featuring a single work. The images by Richard Mosse, Felicity Hammond, Charlie Engman, and Shelley Niro represent highly distinctive approaches to the photographic medium, yet they can each be considered touchstones for areas of common ground that have come together through the process of developing the curated program.
I will add exhibits as I see them.
Allen Gardens - Guardians
King St. West - Hoods
Brookfield Place
Not The Actual Site by Marleen Sleeuwits
Marleen Sleeuwits is inspired by impersonal environments—places that could be anywhere and nowhere—such as vacant zones in airports, unoccupied corridors of hotels, and empty rooms in office buildings. The Netherlands-based artist is attracted to these non-spaces for the lack of impression they leave on people; her work focuses on finding ways of visualizing the identity of these voids and connecting to them in novel ways. Through structural contradiction, illusion, and the manipulation of scale, she aims to transform viewers’ awareness of their surroundings.
First Canadian Place
Barbara Cole is an award-winning Canadian photographer who is known for her distinct underwater photography. Cole has exhibited internationally and is extensively collected by both public and private institutions.
Cole has won prestigious awards such the Grand Prize at the Festival International de la Photographie de Mode in Cannes, and third prize at the International Photography Awards in New York. In 2012, the acclaimed documentary series
Snapshot: The Art of Photography II featured an episode devoted exclusively to Cole’s photographic practice. Barbara Cole lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Ryerson University
Click here for more at Ryerson.
We all know Niro from the AGO’s wry T-shirt series, but over her long career, the Mohawk artist from Six Nations Reserve has also brought her Indigenous feminist viewpoint to installation, film, painting, printmaking and more. Ryerson’s award survey includes sculptures, videos and cyanotypes with textiles and beading.
SCOTT BENESIINAABANDAN: NEWLANDIA: DEBAABAMINAAGWAD
The Anishinabe artist’s abstract images use algorithms to combine photos of two monuments – the Egerton Ryerson statue and rocks in the skating pond – with flags of three First Nations. Mounted on the sidewalk around the statue and on the rocks, they offer a counter-narrative that acknowledges their Indigenous legacy.
Scrap Metal Gallery
MOM by Charlie Engman as part of Contact Photography Festival at Scrap Metal Gallery (11 Dublin, Unit E). Runs to June 16.
A good model has an ineffable ability to feel free in front of a camera lens. For a young fashion photographer, finding a model to forge a trusting creative bond with can be hard. But what if that model turns out to be your mother?
After segueing from the world of dance to photography, New York City-based Charlie Engman began taking pictures of his mother, Kathleen McCain Engman, nearly 10 years ago. It started as a casual thing, with Engman having his mom try on designer clothes after a fashion shoot, or just documenting her day-to-day. It has since snowballed into an ongoing collaborative project and, now, the exhibition Mom, which debuted at Scrap Metal Gallery this month as part of the
Contact Photography Festival.
Click on CONTACT in the tags below to see previous years' exhibits.
