Angela Grauerholz, Three Chairs, 2014, inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist, Art 45, Montreal and the Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto
Ryerson Image Centre celebrates 20 years of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
Apr. 7, 2016
The Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) is pleased to present renowned photographer Susan Meiselas, as part of the Tanenbum Lecture Series in partnership with the International Issues Discussions Series. Meiselas will discuss Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, her influential visual history of the Kurdish people, assembled from photographs, documents and accounts surviving centuries of war and loss. The lecture is free and open to the public and will take place on Wednesday, March 30 at 7:00 pm at the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre (245 Church Street, ENG-103).
With more than 70 works spanning the 1980s to the present day, Scotiabank Photography Award: Angela Grauerholz surveys this celebrated Canadian artist. Grauerholz’s work is full of intimate moments that reveal the passage of time. She is interested in the persistence yet unreliability of cultural memory — in her words, “a kind of amnesia, a vague recollection of something that can be conjured up, triggered by an event or site, but remains blurred.” Presented by Scotiabank, this exhibition is organized by the Ryerson Image Centre in partnership with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
As Robert Bean, professor, curator, and jury member of the Scotiabank Photography Award has written: “The work of Angela Grauerholz is evocative and thoughtful. The strange beauty of her photographs invites the viewer to reflect on the depth of meaning that the ubiquitous presence of photographs may convey.”
Annie MacDonell: Holding Still // Holding Together originates in images of political resistance gathered by the artist from the RIC’s Black Star Collection and other sources. Working with choreographer Ame Henderson and six contemporary dancers, MacDonell studied and dissected these scenes of passive resistance in order to reproduce them using performance and video. At times deceptively peaceful, the photographs express a struggle and imbalance between the police officers and the limp bodies of protestors being forced to move. Despite the variety of circumstances, political situations and historical moments documented, these images demonstrate a clear continuity in the distorted postures of dissidents as they are taken down.
The exhibitions are accompanied by free public programming, including artist and curator walk-throughs, film screenings, talks, lectures and more.