NEW PHOTOGRAPHY AT JOAN FERNEYHOUGH GALLERY DURING CAMERAFRONTERA PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL

North Bay, ON, April 18, 2007--New photographs by gallery artists David Lewis, Marlene Hilton Moore and Ian-Patrick McAllister will be on view at Joan Ferneyhough Gallery from May 5 – June 7. The exhibition entitled Facet presents a segment of each artists’ larger ongoing body of work.

David Lewis has had a life-long empathy for the detritus of our culture. His subjects, machinery, structures or individuals in their final days, lie at the margins of our society but at the heart of his elegiac compositions recalling past vitality and purpose. In Facet, abandoned homesteads in rural backwaters are the focus of Lewis’ lens. Using black and white format, and traditional and contemporary technology he invites the viewer to pay homage to past times and past lives as the structures surrender to nature’s final claim.

Lewis is considered a master of various rare photographic pigment processes, but he also embraces many new printing technologies to produce the desired effect in his images. He lectures and conducts workshops throughout North America and Europe. In a current project entitled Corporate Wasteland, to be published later this year, Lewis and historian Stephen High survey abandoned industrial sites and former employees across North America to assess the toll of progress. Lewis’ work can be found in many private and public collections including the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Butler Institute of American Art.

Ian-Patrick McAllister’s current body of work entitled Semaphore is an exploration, in various mediums, of issues involving perceptions of and experiences with the landscape, and the isolation of the individual through various modes of transportation. As an aspect of this exploration, McAllister uses digital photography to present a view of an ever-changing vista seen peripherally at high speed with interruptions to the “scenic view” from architectural elements and reflections of technology. Themes of transition, dislocation and isolation are metaphors for the uncertainty we face with ongoing changes within our natural environment and the anxiety created by our inability to control them.

McAllister graduated academic of Ontario College of Art, Drawing & Painting Major, Experimental Arts/Printmaking Department. Formerly of Toronto, McAllister now lives and works in North Bay.

Marlene Hilton Moore’s most recent body of work entitled Made to Measure is an exploration, in various mediums, of our ever-changing concept of beauty and how we measured it. In Slip Series, which is part of this ongoing body of work, Hilton Moore uses cropped photographic images of six young women along with audio interview segments that speak of the beauty of the body and give voice to body language and more.

Hilton Moore has won numerous public art commissions in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Her most recent is The Valiants Memorial in Ottawa wherein fourteen Canadian individuals have been memorialized in bronze for their heroic actions during periods of conflict throughout Canadian history. She is the focus of an upcoming documentary film about the public art commissions for Concord Adex City Place in Toronto. An Associate Professor of Georgian College, School of Design and Visual Arts, Barrie, Hilton Moore lives and works in Hillsdale, Ontario.

Facet is one of twelve exhibitions making up camerafrontera: a festival of contemporary Canadian photography. The festival runs from May 4 - 26. The festival is funded in part by The Ontario Trillium Foundation and is sponsored by Photo Metro.



There will be an opening brunch reception for Facet on Saturday, May 5 from 11 - 1 p.m. at Joan Ferneyhough Gallery. The artists will be present and everyone is welcome.