Hunting | A Group Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: September 26 – October 25, 2008

A group exhibition featuring:

Benoit Aquin, Tina Clark, Richard Harrington, Vid Ingelevics, Terence Koh, Les Krims & William Notman

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English huntian; akin to Old English hentan to seize,

Date: before 12th century

Transitive verb: 1 a: to pursue for food or in sport, b: to manage in the search for game,

2 a: to pursue with intent to capture b: to search out.

Never before has the human race been as conscious of the distance to our origins as hunters-gatherers. As society reflects upon the need for radical change in the way we inhabit the Earth there is a growing interest in closing this gap, especially in the way we feed ourselves. Whereas 20 years ago this social consciousness was firmly rooted in the camps of herbivores, more recently the desire to affect change is of equal interest to carnivores. 

This exhibition includes various 19^th and 20^th Century ruminations on ‘hunting’. William Notman’s studio was famous for photographically illustrating Canadian life to the world at large, so we include several examples from his“Moose Hunting” series, which are among his best-known staged studio sessions. Richard Harrington’s work in the late 1940s and 1950s provides a glimpse at traditional hunting methods before society was altered drastically by Western life. Les Krims’ work “The Deerslayers” was a landmark publication that laid bare the dark side of this American ritual in the 1970s. Vid Ingelevics’ series “Platforms” documents raised hunting blinds that, to the casual observer, appear as earnestly made tree houses that dot the Ontario landscape. Terence Koh is best known for his work exalting the gay gaze and serves as a counterpoint to Benoit Aquin’s work that venerates modern day hunting. Lastly, the work of Tina Clark cleverly re-presents benign table scraps as heroic trophies.