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alicedixon.ca postart.ca/anchorless/

May 1-31, 2014

Opening Reception: Friday, May 2 from 7-10pm

gallerywest is extremely pleased to present this special exhibit from Alice Dixon. "To Come To Earth Again" is a featured exhibition as part of the 2014 Contact Photography Festival.

The Last Greenhouse, When Rivers Run Dry, and Walking with Geologists are three new and related photographic series that function as field notes in Alice Dixon’s ongoing exploration of human interactions with nature. These depictions of sites from around the world, where humans and nature intersect, focus on the complex and contradictory relationships of proportion and affect.

The Last Greenhouse offers idiosyncratic views of a unique urban greenhouse where citizens can tend to their plants all through the cold weather. It is literally a breath of fresh air walking into this abundantly green space, which offers numerous benefits to its community of users, many of whom are elderly. Nevertheless the fate of this space hangs in a fragile balance, much like the life of a cultivated plant. When Rivers Run Dry chronicles a series of large river beds in Southern Spain that allow the area to act as a flood plain when heavy rains bring water rushing down from the mountains. Locals describe impassible roads in years past and the relief that bridge and riverbed construction provided. They also say that the winter rainy season brings less and less water, so in the month of February when there would normally be healthy river flow there are just these empty beds.

Walking with Geologists follows a group of scientists on a field trip through some of the unique rock formations found throughout the volcanic islands that compose Japan.

Here, the camera observes a detailed human analysis of a natural material whose present stasis holds the potential for dramatic upheaval.

In these images, physical perspectives parallel ontological considerations, as a visual medium is used to render ethical inquiries. Dixon offers three unique perspectives from Canada, Spain, and Japan; each one allowing viewers to consider their role as actors in the environments that sustain them.

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Alice Dixon was born in Toronto, Canada. She holds a degree in Photographic Studies from Ryerson University. Dixon has been exhibiting and curating for over ten years. Her experience extends internationally having lived and worked in Paris, France. Dixon was the Head of Exhibitions and Publications at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography from 2009 to 2013. She maintains an independent practice as an artist and curator.

A catalogue for this exhibition, with an essay by Sky Goodden, will be published by Anchorless Press and available at gallerywest. To pre-order a book please email: [email protected]

Oneself Through Another

Taimaz Moslemian

March 7-30, 2014

Opening Reception: March 7 | 7pm-late | 1172 Queen St. W.

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Family albums, collective archives of a time lived, are often composed of photographic documentations by not one, but multiple authors. This multiplicity of perspectives along with the presence of numerous signifiers within each photograph allow for the construction of co-existent narratives.

More info: http://gallerywest.info/programming.html

Wild Mountain Time

Mani Mazinani

Curated by: Taimaz Moslemian

March 7-30, 2014

Opening Reception: March 7 | 7pm-late | 1172 Queen St. W.

**** A sequence of photographs of the Scottish landscape becomes the intermediate background for a further seeing, that returns the flat picture plane to a three-dimensional reality that is once again flattened by the photographic process of film.

Evan Tyler of Toronto is a curator, gallery director, writer and multidisciplinary visual artist. Evan's approach to curating is based on two key components, idea and response.

To Serve Man is a Cookbook

Jason Wright

February 4-28, 2014

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 6 from 7-10 PM

To Serve Man is a Cookbook  peers into the pleasures and excesses of contemporary food culture in relation to ones' body. The work examines the communal performances of form, the smacking poesy of lips, the creamy comedy of slick tongues, the playful pulls and squishes of mouths dripping and salivating words, the joyful spill-overs of conversations and connections.