Or Gallery
Monique Dykstra: Too Thick To Drink, Too Thin To Plow
Gaye Jackson: Travelogue
November 25 to December 23, 1995
Opening: Saturday November 25
Artist Talks: 2pm November 25
The OR Gallery is pleased to present this exhibition of photographic works by Montreal artist Monique Dykstra and Toronto artist Gaye Jackson. Both works exhibited employ photography and text. Unknown to each other, the artists have undertaken challenging journeys into the landscape and each has produced a body of work based on their record-keeping.
In 1993 Monique Dykstra and Kathleen Usher canoed the 2,000 mile Yukon River in Alaska, photographing and interviewing the people they met along the way. Too Thick To Drink, Too Thin To Plow documents their trip in a series of black and white portraits and transcribed interviews of the people they met along their way.
In 1988 and 1991 Gaye Jackson hiked into and out of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. This installation was produced from her photographs and writings. Travelogue utilizes manipulated colour photography and spoken text on audiotape to evoke the physical and psychological act of descending into unfamiliar and ‘extreme’ territory.
Dysktra and Jackson will be present at the exhibition opening to discuss their work. A publication will accompany the exhibition.
In the words and images which make up Travelogue, Gaye Jackson takes us on a journey. Part of that journey traces a descent into the Grand Canyon, past its layers which are pictured in the photographs, and referred to in the text. With each step you are carried through another millennium of creation, giving the sensation of becoming “unstuck in time.”
Gaye also shows us another path: one which descends through the surface layers of consciousness, past our initial assessment of the reality which surrounds us, and into a state of openness where we are able to perceive the real and the surreal in the same world.
Travelogue is a work of dualities. In some of the images, hot, violet light bakes the Canyon, giving the sensation of a place prickling with heat. Other images are lush in their colour and texture: a cool, flowing river reflects the sunrise which bathes the Canyon wall in golden light.
Duality also extends to the spoken text. The words, read by the artist with museum-guide neutrality, deliver Canyon facts and safety tips gleaned from hiking manuals. Slipped between these passages are descriptions of surreal encounters with people, animals and the Canyon itself: a man asking for spare change on the pathways falls into a rock and disappears; a small yellow lizard becomes the life of the party. The physical intensity of an encounter within the Canyon may cause you to perceive it in a different light, just as experiencing your environment in varied states of emotion will do. These altered perceptions are valuable and can provide insights into our own existence.
In Travelogue, the Canyon is a grand site for perception. As we descend the canyon walls, and the walls of our consciousness, we become open to our imagination and its potency.
-John Scully,
Exhibition Selection Committee
