>>PREVIEW
THE MECHANICS OF AN IMAGE
Runs until August 12
The New Gallery
The Mechanics of an Image at The New Gallery is an exhibition with a stated intention to "contemplate the moving image."
Three artists, Michael Coolidge, Joe Kelly and Pavitra Wickramasinghe take a crack at the objective with varying degrees of success.
Coolidge provides a series of photographs that were created using a pinhole camera. With the domination of digital image making, a paradoxical shift is taking place with more and more photographers, artists and all-round creators now exploring photography with pinhole cameras. With nothing more than a light-tight box with some photosensitive material placed inside and a pinhole pricked into it (to create an aperture for the light to strike the film or photographic paper) extraordinary pictures are being made.
Coolidge, a graduate of Alberta College of Art and Design, has created pinhole photographs by pointing his camera at a television while popular movies are played. The result, from long exposure times and moving imagery on the screen, is the soft-focus, blurry kind of photograph that one would expect. Unfortunately, the photographs fail to offer any real excitement or tension and the results leave one wanting more than just a "Wow, look what I did with a pinhole camera" experience.
Next is Wickramasinghe’s piece titled, Had I been kidnapped by myself? This is an intriguing installation, flavoured with humour that presses the viewer to wonder, "How did she do that?" The answer is behind the screen, where the "rolling landscape" is the result of layers of images and illustrations that are projected past a stationary screen and finally on to the receiving scrim. The accumulation of the component parts is of a scene of a group of people as they pass through a cityscape following a bird. The piece captures a strain of satirical humour that is welcome and is often missing in artist run galleries where intellectual fervour sometimes threatens to overtake every facet of programming.
Finally is Yawning Trout, presented by Calgary media artist and filmmaker Joe Kelly. Noted for his clever video installations, this fish was unfortunately in a coma, due to the apparatus used to project his motion study – a Tyrachoscope – being in a non-functioning state.
Whether due to some technical problem or the staff of the gallery simply failing to plug in the contraption, this fish wasn’t moving. Although the device can be appreciated for its impressive sculptural elements, it was a disappointment to view Kelly’s trout yawn in what would surely be all of its glory.
The Mechanics of an Image may not succeed on every count, but it remains a smart effort that touches on our continuing fascination with image making in all forms and manner. |
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