Gallery Response

I love seeing the Aimia/Grange Prize Exhibition every year at the AGO. It's very inspiring to be able to see artists working today that are changing what photography is. You never see just plain old photographs in this exhibition - not that there's anything wrong with traditional photography, it's just nice to see something different! It's so cool to see artists working with all different kinds of mediums in their photography and how they tie them together. It's hard for me to pick my favourite artist in the exhibition, but it would have to be a tie between Elad Lassry and Lisa Oppenheim.

Elad's work is so interesting. I love how he is really challenging the idea of what photography is. Adding three dimensional objects turns his images into much more than just photography and I think it's great. It really makes you think.

Lisa's work challenges what photography is as well but is approached in a different way. I like that she uses pre-existing images because that is what I like to use in my own work as well. Pulling up images on Google is something that any person could do but she decides to turn them into something of her own. Although her smoke images do have a deeper meaning, I do just find them very beautiful to look at as well.  

12 words

Forward
What
Cut
Paste
Progress
Why
How
Reason
Women
Surreal
Collage
Source

Original Proposal

"Somewhere I find something trivial, the more trivial the better - something that doesn't say anything, but which suddenly stimulates my imagination and forces me to make a statement." - Hannah Hoch

          Last year I began to work with collage and more hands on processes for my assignments. I had always enjoyed doing this kind of work just for fun in my free time but until then had not started to think about using it in my work. I found it quite challenging to play out serious concepts when you are limited to already made images. It was quite overwhelming but I loved giving new life to old images that otherwise would remain in books and magazines sitting around collecting dust. So I would like to continue working with this process.

          As of right now, my idea is still a little up in the air. I did a lot of research on Hannah Hoch and other Dada and Surrealist artists. I have been very inspired by Hoch's aesthetics and loved reading about her stance on feminism and gender roles. I studied through a lot of paintings by surrealist artists too and even drew inspiration from those. Last year I did a bit of a commentary on what it's like to be a woman in a world which sometimes feels is completely run by men. I played with text phrases from teen magazines from the 1960's and placed them with images of women on absurd backgrounds. I found it interesting to work with old material as it shows how far we have come since then but also shows that in some cases we are still kind of in the same place with feminism and gender roles.

          At this point I am teetering between continuing with this sort subject matter or exploring surrealism a bit more. Last year I changed my idea several times as I was creating the collages as I was constantly being inspired to new ideas by the material I was using. I have begun working on it and I should be able to have a more solid idea in the next couple of weeks but this is where I am at right now.