Lise Beaudry: Sur la glace | Standing on Ice

Monday, 21 May 2012 09:59

A&E

A Featured Exhibition of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival (scotiabankcontactphoto.com)

Lise Beaudry's exhibition Sur la glace | Standing on Ice, on view at the Art Gallery of Mississauga until July 8th, won the BMW Exhibition Prize at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival last Thursday evening, May 16th, at the MOCCA, Toronto. The BMW prize, which comes with a $5000 award, acknowledges an outstanding exhibition in CONTACT each year, selected from Featured and Open Exhibitions. A winner is chosen by the jury based on "the caliber and concept of the work, the curatorial vision, and the overall impact of the exhibition." (Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival website)

This year's jury includes photographer, educator and Daylight Magazine founding editor Michael Itkoff and Ryerson Image Centre Researcher in Residence Dr. Thierry Gervais.

Lise Beaudry, Artist:

"I am so pleased and honoured to be the recipient of the BMW exhibition award in CONTACT 2012 for my exhibition Standing on Ice at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. I am grateful for the support of the CONTACT staff and the generosity of BMW. I look forward to using the award to produce new works!"

Stuart Keeler, AGM Curator & Director of Programmes:

"Lise Beaudry brings with her confidence and professionalism an engaging way of seeing the Canadian landscape anew."

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT

Sur la glace / Standing on Ice is part of Lise Beaudry's ongoing investigation into the culture of the Ontario north. Returning to the Franco-Ontarian lake community where she grew up, Beaudry documents a landscape she knows personally. Her photographic series of monochromatic studies, WhiteScapes (2010), create an abstract portrait of the temporal states of ice and snow. Shot under grey cloud cover, the artist carefully considers the angle of view, aperture, exposure, and printing process to create images that attempt to expose the limits of the photograph. The artist says, "They appear to be of almost nothing." Suggesting the experience of walking to the centre of a frozen lake, these photos point to a spiritual subtext-implying a rite of sacred navigation.

Beaudry's video projection, Zone (2011), uses an underwater camera to capture the grey-tone beauty of water moving beneath the cover of snow and ice. The work's audio component, made in collaboration with media artist and composer Michelle Irving, was produced by submerging microphones under the frozen lake. Zone's muffled bass and the echo of sound, experienced with headphones, provide an ambient soundtrack for the viewing of quiet and minimal images.

Lise Beaudry, Artist:

"For several months, I have worked hard to bring together my new work with previous and archival works which led to the production of white minimal photographs of frozen lakes. It has been a great pleasure to work with curator Stuart Keeler to make sense of the images in the context of the exhibition and the two gallery spaces of the Art Gallery of Mississauga. "