Reception for the Artist: Saturday, November 26, 2016, 2-5pm
Exhibition Dates: November 26, 2016 - January 14, 2017
The gallery is pleased to present "Frontière, Frontiera, Grenze", our fourth solo exhibition of work by Canadian photographer Scott Conarroe.
"Frontière, Frontiera, Grenze" considers the moveable boundaries that select Alpine states devised in response to glacial melting and drifting watersheds. As permafrost in the Alps retreats to cooler elevations, the terrain below disintegrates and these landscapes no longer conform to the borders established in the last century. Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and France have rendered boundaries fluid through a series of bilateral agreements. In the coming decades when their geographies re-stabilize, new frontiers will be drawn to honour these various treaties. This willingness to re-imagine conventions of autonomy is one scant silver lining of glacial extinction. These vistas are lovely but far from pristine; they simultaneously contain the aftermath of our Industrial Age, and an avant-garde view of statecraft for an era increasingly defined by climate change. "Frontière", "frontiera", and "grenze" are, respectively, the French, Italian and German words for "border".
Conarroe's sweeping vistas are imbued with his command of light and colour, and emphasize his fascination with a landscape affected by human existence. His photographs are also evidence of his remarkable stamina for journeying. Previous projects saw him zig-zag across and circumnavigate North America. For this project, he has spent the past several years locating remote vantage points in order to fully capture the scope of this region between countries.
Scott Conarroe (b. Edmonton, 1974) holds a MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Recent exhibitions include a two-person show with the legendary mountaineer and photographer Vittorio Sella at Photographica Fine Art Gallery (Lugano, Switzerland, 2016), and the group show CALAMITA/À at Matèria (Rome, Italy). His work has been collected by many institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada, Stadt Zürich, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. His first monograph, By Rail and By Sea, was published by Black Dog Publishing (London, UK) in 2015. Scott will be a Visiting Artist at Emily Carr University's Audain Faculty of Visual Art and Material Practice (Vancouver, BC) in the coming spring.
This work was made possible with a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and support from The Canada Council for the Arts, Light Work, and ArtBellwald.ch. Frontière, Frontiera, Grenze is part of Project Pressure.
