Jennifer McMackon: Connection

Toronto-based artist and art blogger, Jennifer McMackon, continues my recent project by writing about "connection." As usual, I extend an invitation to all local artists who would like to participate in this effort. Just email me!

Now and Next Minute Reversal Photograph at Grona Lund #5
3' x 4'
2004

Jennifer McMackon: Connection

These photos are called Now and Next Minute Reversal Photographs. Each one is a collage composed of two photographs of the same landscape - one taken moments after the other and turned upside down in relation to it as an almost but not quite mirror image. The collage is then re-photographed and enlarged so that the horizon blurs top into bottom. Each depicted world is supported by or precariously perched upon an upside down version of itself. I guess your word "connection" is pretty apt - because I am pretty interested in the seam where the two worlds meet - or not.

Two things, first: I went to Stockholm recently to exhibit my work at a gallery called Konstakuten. The piece I showed is a video projection called thrill rides. thrill rides is part of a body of work exploring landscape in video, an anthology of short vignettes ranging between about a minute and a half up to eight minutes in length, each one documenting a complete spin on a different amusement park ride. Each vignette in thrill rides is one continuous shot in real time with a hand held camera. The piece was made on the midway at the Canadian National Exhibition, an annual fair in Toronto. The landscape in thrill rides is full of large machines performing vertiginous functions on people who look a bit like Duane Hanson sculptures scrambling all over the place. In each segment of the tape a thrill ride performs its twirling mechanical functions, passengers screaming and dangling high above the people on the ground, spectators and onlookers playing out their own dramas. As one of my Swedish contacts led us to the place we would be staying during the week I was installing my show, she stopped at a roadside vista overlooking the sea. She said it was a place tourists like to stop for photo ops. It was really beautiful. But I was interested to see across the water the lights of an amusement park twinkled in the night sky.

Second: When I got to the gallery next day to set up my work, I realized I had misread the gallery floor plan and that an additional, very long and narrow space was available for my use if I wanted. I bounced some ideas around in my head and then with the gallery staffers but I already made (yes) a connection between the previous evening's stop at the roadside view and the glimpse I had caught of the thrill rides across the water. The next morning I caught an early ferry boat to Stockholm's quite old and beautifully manicured Tivoli style amusement park, Grona Lund. I took pictures all morning and installed the photographs late that afternoon. Since space and time were extremely limited I showed the prints as raw material, about 15 Now and Next Minute Reversal Photographs at Grona Lund applied directly to the wall at a very small scale of 6"x8". I was really happy with the way they worked in such a tight space. They made a great companion piece to my video projection. I am glad I scrambled to get them. Now that I am back in the studio in Toronto, the labour of rephotographing or basically finishing them is underway. If you were actually visiting the studio today I'd be showing you the mockups. In a couple of months I'll have them to scale.

What made you say connection?

Now and Next Minute Reversal Photograph at Grona Lund #6
3' x 4'
2004

Previous Posts:

Charles Neenan: Tradition
Kelly Towles: Color
Ryan Mulligan: Originality
Matt Hollis: Confinement
Dean Fueroghne: Originality
James W. Bailey: Obligation
J. Coleman: Depiction
Andy Moon Wilson: Decision
Molly Springfield: Language
Bryan Whitson: Scene
Elyse Harrison: Motivation
Jiha Moon Wilson: Influence
Alexandra Silverthorne: Derivative
Jose Ruiz: Contemporary
Kathleen Shafer: Focus

Comments

[ca]

this sucks bad.