The Monte Clark Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Toronto of the Vancouver photographer Scott McFarland.

PHOTONOMENA

12 September - 13 October, 2002
Opening: September 12, 6pm
Artist in attendance

The exhibition, Photonomena, gathers together three series of recent work that document a range of places, from estate gardens to a rustic cabin to the inner workings of the photography lab itself. Uniting the exhibition is the notion of photography as a self-generating force. As McFarland has written, "Photography en abyme is a type of reflexive image that makes visible the process of photography through the depiction of some internal referent within the photograph itself. This occurs when aspects of photography as an optical or chemical medium appear within the image as subject matter distinct from just the literary content. The images in this exhibition illustrate this concept of depicting the structure of the photograph as the practical reason behind the picture.."

As a contrived landscape in need of constant maintenance, the estate garden as documented by McFarland is a fertile site for issues of class, hired labour, surveillance and the concept of a privatized Eden. While operating as visions of their owner's pastoral desires, these bucolic spaces are also monitored by security cameras in a manner that reflects the appraisal of the photographer's eye.

In another series a coastal cabin is documented at night using the flash-like qualities of motion sensors. These suggest the potential for burglary and intrusion. Interior views, meanwhile, are warmly lit by the embers of a woodstove or by the wick of a hurricane lamp, capturing the cozy mood of an earlier, more rusticated era. Here artificial and natural light are treated as revelatory, photographic experiences.

Scenes from the commercial lab foreground the manufacturing of images themselves. At the lab technicians coax, fix and burn negatives into a permanent, positive state through a toxic, alchemical phenomena. The results are photographs that have essentially recorded their own birth.

Scott McFarland graduated from UBC in 1997. He has since exhibited widely, including the Essor Gallery, London (2002), the Centro de Arte de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain (2002), the Vancouver Art Gallery (2001), the Monte Clark Gallery Vancouver (2001) and the Torstrasse, Berlin (1999).

The Monte Clark Gallery, with spaces in Toronto and Vancouver, represents leading Canadian and international contemporary artists, including Roy Arden, Graham Gillmore, Anna Hunt and Scott McFarland.

Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11-7pm, Sunday, 12-5pm. Monte Clark Toronto is located at the intersection of Queen West and Niagara. Please contact the gallery for images and further information.