... strange things done ...
T
hreading its way through the works in ... strange things done ... is an interest in the manner in
which early or low-tech forms of imaging, illusion and other communications technologies may
be merged with new technology or with what is now the mundane or obsolete technology of
modern times. Most of the artists have created works that are self-illuminated; the camera obscura’s
optical properties just a starting point for their thinking. Each of the artists in this exhibition is a
student or alumni of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD, Halifax), Thompson
Rivers University (TRU, Kamloops), or the Yukon School of Visual Arts (YSOVA, Dawson City).
Dion Fortie (TRU)
Passing Through, 2015
“High overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars” wrote Robert Service, and
the Kamloops-based crew did in fact see the Northern Lights streaming up from behind the Stikine
Mountains while heading up the Stewart Cassiar Highway a month before this exhibition’s opening.
Such an image of the north’s light is echoed in Dion Fortie’s Passing Through, in which a pair of
carrousel projectors cast cyan and magenta images of objects from Yukon’s past onto layers of
translucent plexiglass. Playing off an interest in how mid nineteenth century stereoscopic technology
evolved into film culture during the late Victorian era these pairs of slightly off-registration anaglyph
images will present an illusion of three dimensional depth.
Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival