The FOFA Gallery presents: Noble | Jin | Pupo, Friesen, Flannigan

Wren Noble: Mother

In Mother, the artist depicts the late stages of her mother's struggle with early-onset Alzheimer's. She began photographing her mother when she was diagnosed at the age of 53. Now, almost ten years later she doesn't speak or make eye contact and needs constant care. As a subject she is unselfconscious and unaware of the presence of the camera. In this work the artist explores illness, identity and the act of caretaking within a space that is both intimately domestic and permeated by the necessities of long term medical care. Through the act of photographing her, the artist attempts to explore their relationship as mother and daughter.

Mother includes photographic prints and video portraits produced over the last two years.

Hua Jin: Conversing in the Passing of Time, curated by Sally Lee

Conversing in the Passing of Time presents simultaneously an excerpt of Hua Jin's project, TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and a new installation project, Mountain, that together materialize the ongoing research of the artist into ideas of being and time. 

As framed by curator Sally Lee: 

"There is no meaning if meaning is not shared, and not because there would be an ultimate or first signification that all beings have in common, but because meaning is itself the sharing of Being."

The idea of no existence without being co-existence, no meaning without sharing, no self without the other - the quotation from Jean-Luc Nancy's, Being Singular Plural, sums up beautifully Jin's "TCM" and "Mountain". Both works resonate an omnipresence of human, of being alive - an overarching experience that can be traced in Jin's other photographic works. They are alluring and poignant in the unsettling sensation within tranquility. There are silent dichotomies awaiting - cold and warm, wet and dry, sound and silence, absence and presence of human/consciousness, black and white, used and renewal, all within the notion of repetition performing difference in sequence of movements in co-existence.

Sarah Pupo, Kandis Friesen, Kerri Flannigan: paperwork

paperwork is a process-based installation of an animated 'exquisite corpse' video project in the York Corridor Vitrine. Part residency, part studio, and part exhibition, the collaborative show takes the form of three animators working in three of the vitrine sections, with the fourth section dedicated to a regularly updated video projection of sequential animated loops as they evolve. 

paperwork aims to demystify the process of shooting frame-by-frame, drawing attention to the construction of the animated image, it's materiality, and the labour and conditions of its making.

The playful, transformative nature of the exquisite corpse provides an ideal vehicle for us to experiment and work in direct dialogue with each other, responding to one another's form, content and style. A classic surrealist drawing game, it collaboratively assembles an image by having one artist add on to a previous artist's imagery. The words exquisite corpse themselves suggest the sensuous and the imperfect decay of the material world - this is fitting as our practices are linked by a passion for the detritus and the hands-on, messy manipulation of real objects and materials through combined old and new technologies.

During the exhibition this process and its debris will be on display, allowing research, experimentation and 'finished' work to coexist and bridging the often-intangible transformative process of turning material objects into ephemeral projections. As a public installation, passersby will be able to watch us at work and witness the animation unfold.

Additional information

When: 

February 24 to March 28, 2014 

(vernissage: February 27, 5 to 7 p.m.)

Where:

FOFA Gallery, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University

1515 Ste. Catherine Street W., EV 1-715

Montreal, Quebec (Metro Guy-Concordia)

Gallery Hours: 

Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. 

Information:

FOFA Gallery or 514-848-2424 ext. 7962

Free admission. Everyone welcome.