Post by Julia Bustos.
Held at the Spiral Gallery for Festival X, (Dis)Appearance featured works by photographers Glenn Bloodworth, Freeman Keats, William (Bill) McCloskey, Maureen Murphy, and Richard Perron. The focus of the exhibition stemmed from a quote by Henry David Thoreau, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
It seems only fitting that the group of photographers would have an affinity to Thoreau. Not only was the naturalist a huge champion of natural observation and personal experiences, he aspired to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world” [from Walden].
Ephemeros Fyomont by Glenn Bloodworth. From the Festival X website.
Similarly, (Dis)Appearance presents viewers with a series of disparate and complex realities of our time, which are loosely left open to interpretation. Glenn Bloodworth’s Ephemeros Fyomont examines an abandoned Canadian Cold War military facility in relation to awareness and disappearance. The Chicken Barn, by Freeman Keats, highlights the quick evolution of boiler chickens in an Ontario farm. Before They Disappear, a series by Bill McCloskey, focuses on corner stores as fading landmarks and social mobility markers. Maureen Murphy’s New Realities revolves around the artist’s close relation to Alzheimer’s and dementia. Richard Perron’s pictures focus on the sense of self-perception through wardrobe.
As an exhibition, (Dis)Appearance makes a point of emphasizing local landscapes that are universally familiar and accessible: startling as well as, ultimately, replaceable. The inevitability of change as elemental to life is carried through in every photograph; however it is up to the viewer to determine where meaning or beauty can be found.
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