Toronto School of Art: Launch Project Gallery – Toronto Metro Ontario 2010
Before and After
Contact Photography Festival 2010
Cambridge Bay Street and Journal, Nunavut. A repainted photograph taken by the artist in January 1981 and repositioned in a contemporary discussion of memory and the collapse of time and space. From Arctic Crisis Series on filtered memory and intervention of time.
Launch Projects Gallery, 404 Adelaide (@ Spadina) Toronto ON. May 2010.
“Before and After” considers the way photography informs and transforms behavior and examines connections between mass media, consumerism, advertising, art and photography. The works address how photography has the power to affect and influence culture, and how the consequences of recording the “before and after” can inform our emotional and political actions, whether impulsively or rationally.
Artist Statement
The Ecology of Narrative Space is an ongoing aesthetic investigation on the simultaneity of filtered memory and time, and the intersection of personal and institutional identity. The Arctic Crisis Project, Parts 1 and 2 photomontage print series (2008-09) are a contemporary discussion on global warming and filtered memory. Part 4, Arctic Journal Reading Installation, inspired by the Part 3 Arctic Journal Reading Performance (2009 Banff), is reconceived in the sub title, The Ecology of Narrative Space.
Biography
Sandra Hawkins is a recognized contemporary visual/media artist showing in major centres across Canada and internationally in China, Russia, Germany, Hungary, United States, the SUBA Biennale in Colombia, and the National Gallery of Pakistan where images from the Arctic Crisis Project are part of their National Collection. Hawkins lived and worked in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, 1980 and 1982 during which time she visited Central Arctic communities now part of Nunavut, as preventative health educator. She currently resides in Ottawa, and periodically Toronto, traveling out from these centres for her international multi media art exhibitions, residencies and research. Hawkins is a 2010 K.M. Hunter Award nominee by the Ontario Art Council and the Ontario Art Foundation for contributions her art is making in her field