News at the IMC

March exhibitions and events at The Ryerson Image Centre

Clive Holden invites public nominations of photographs for UNAMERICAN UNFAMOUS
Kodak Lecture: Gabor Szilasi in conversation with David Harris
Opening: Gemma Warren: Year Zero. A Prison With No Walls
Noon Time Talk: Phil Bergerson, Shards of America And Beyond
Continuing: Human Rights Human Wrongs, Alfredo Jaar: The Politics of Images

There is much to be seen at the The Ryerson Image Centre this March. In addition to the opening of a new exhibition, Gemma Warren: Year Zero. A Prison With No Walls, visitors to the RIC will also experience moving continuing exhibitions and have the opportunity to gain insight into the work from the curators and artists themselves at various lectures and walk throughs of the gallery.

Clive Holden invites Torontonians and people from all over the world to nominate a photograph of someone who is both “un-American” and “unjustly un-famous” for inclusion in UNAMERICAN UNFAMOUS. Drawing from the Black Star Collection at Ryerson University, UNAMERICAN UNFAMOUS uses the “un-famous” as an organizing principle in his selection of one hundred image details and faces. The work is made with photographic, cinematic and web tools, and film leader (the beginning and end pieces of film reels). With a complex series of randomizing algorithms, the film loops are juxtaposed and continually remixed with the “unsung human leaders” found in the Black Star Collection, as well as with photographs of local un-famous un-Americans nominated by members of the public. Nominations of photographs are being accepted now until the deadline of March 15, 2013. Public photograph nominations are being accepted at www.unamericanunfamous.com. The work will evolve over the course of the exhibition as public community-nominated images are added. Clive Holden: UNAMERICAN UNFAMOUS is curated by Dr. Gaelle Morel, and will be on view on the Ryerson Image Centre’s Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall until April 14, 2013.

The Ryerson Image Centre, in partnership with the School of Image Arts, presents a Kodak Lecture featuring Gabor Szilasi in conversation with David Harris on Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 7:00p.m. In the summer of 2013, the Ryerson Image Centre will show Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday, a retrospective of one of Canada’s pre-eminent social documentary photographers. Over the course of more than fifty years, Szilasi has created remarkable images of Quebec and Europe — townscapes and cityscapes, views of domestic and commercial architecture, and, pre-eminently, environmental portraits. In this Kodak Lecture with professor David Harris, the curator of the exhibition, Gabor Szilasi will present an overview of his work, illuminating his approach to photography through a selection of images. The Kodak Lecture: Gabor Szilasi in conversation with David Harris will take place at Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, LIB-72.

Gemma Warren: Year Zero. A Prison With No Walls opens at the Ryerson Image Centre on Wednesday, March 20, 2013. A reflection on the relationship between memory, trauma, past, and present, the work focuses specifically on the repercussions of the Khmer Rouge genocide, which took place throughout Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The landscape photographs in this series provide a visual framework as documents of present sites inhabited by traumatic histories. Incorporating direct quotes from survivors, Warren creates a dynamic that reveals a gap between the atrocities that were suffered and what the landscape fails to reveal. Similar to the photographs, video and audio are looped to display images and sounds specific to S-21 Tuol Sleng prison and Choeung Ek Killing Fields, placing the viewer directly in front of the sites where so many lost their lives. Gemma Warren: Year Zero. A Prison With No Walls will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre’s Student Gallery March 20 – April 14, 2013.

At the Ryerson Image Centre’s Research Centre, a Noon Time Talk by Phil Bergerson entitled Shards of America and Beyond will take place on Thursday, March 21, 2013 at 12:00p.m. Phil Bergerson is a photographer whose fascination with the ironic detritus of North American culture is longstanding. His remarkable book, Shards of America, is a rich and tumbling index of cultural expression as seen in the architecture, the streets and the signage of small towns across the continent. The Ryerson Image Centre has been the fortunate recipient of a range of prints from the project. Phil Bergerson’s work is held by the Bibliothe?que Nationale de France, the CMCP and the National Gallery of Canada. He is represented by the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre, and Dr. Gaelle Morel, curator of Alfredo Jaar: The Politics of Images and Clive Holden: UNAMERICAN UNFAMOUS, will lead a Curator Walk-Through of the exhibitions on view at the Ryerson Image Centre on Wednesday, March 27 at 6:00p.m.

Additional Continuing Exhibitions:

Captive State, an exhibition of photographs taken by Dominic Nahr during two trips to Somalia, will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre’s Student Gallery until March 10, 2013.

Human Rights Human Wrongs uses the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a point of departure to examine whether images of political struggle, suffering and victims of violence work for or against humanitarian objectives. Curated by Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph ABP in London, England, and named a 2012 Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) Human Rights Human Wrongs features 316 original prints from the prestigious Black Star Collection. It includes well-known Civil Rights Movement events such as the Selma to Montgomery March and Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. The exhibition also features images of the independence movements in African countries; portraits of Nobel Peace Prize winners Lester B. Pearson, Yasser Arafat, and Rene? Cassin; and war and conflict from the Vietnam War to the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Viewer discretion and parental guidance is advised. Human Rights Human Wrongs is made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group, with additional funding from the Paul J. Ruhnke Memorial Fund, the Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Family Charitable Foundation and Ryerson University. The exhibition is a collaboration with Autograph ABP (supported by Arts Council England) Human Rights Human Wrongs will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre Main Gallery until April 14, 2013.

Alfredo Jaar: The Politics of Images curated by Dr. Gaelle Morel, exhibitions curator at the RIC, addresses political concerns and the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. The Chilean-born, New York-based artist highlights ignored contemporary tragedies such as genocides, epidemics, and famines to promote cultural change. In his works Searching for Africa in Life (1996) and From Time to Time (2006), Jaar displays covers of news magazines to analyze the lack of visibility and the visual cliche?s about Africa disseminated in Western culture. The artist’s three-channel video We Wish to Inform You That We Didn’t Know (2010), his most recent project on the genocide in Rwanda, acts as an epilogue to The Rwanda Project, 1994-2000, a series of twenty-five artworks developed to critique the world’s indifference and inaction to that mass murder. Alfredo Jaar: The Politics of Images will be on view in the Ryerson Image Centre University Gallery until April 14, 2013.

These exhibitions have been financially assisted by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, a program of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation.