John Player, Ripley Whiteside, Caroline Monnet
12 Jan - 18 Feb 2017
Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is pleased to present the work of three exciting emerging talents in Montreal: Caroline Monnet, John Player, and Ripley Whiteside.
Showing in the gallery’s dedicated video room is Caroline Monnet’s video work Mobilize. Produced with the NFB, Mobilize is part of a film series addressing Aboriginal identity and representation by reworking material in the NFB’s archives. A journey by canoe into the city creates a dynamic interconnection between natural and urban spaces. In this evocative short set to a hypnotizing soundtrack by Inuk artist Tanya Taqaq, director Caroline Monnet celebrates the fierce resourcefulness of Indigenous people in adapting to the dizzying changes of the past century.
On the walls of the gallery is a selection of new paintings by John Player. Player’s choice of images are diverse and far reaching, each one a piece in a puzzle of relational aesthetics and free-association. The stories and contexts of each painting are individually significant, while the ensemble evokes a message. The works selected here have a broader relation to the overuse, misuse and neglect of natural resources and romantic ideals of nature.
At first glance, Ripley Whiteside’s suite of drawings appear as menageries of colourful and exotic aquatic species. However, Whiteside’s juxtaposition of rare, beautiful and foreign underwater species now found in the Greater Toronto Area is informed by a deeper investigation of the ecological consequences of both aquacultural development and our need for spectacle.
Showing in the gallery’s dedicated video room is Caroline Monnet’s video work Mobilize. Produced with the NFB, Mobilize is part of a film series addressing Aboriginal identity and representation by reworking material in the NFB’s archives. A journey by canoe into the city creates a dynamic interconnection between natural and urban spaces. In this evocative short set to a hypnotizing soundtrack by Inuk artist Tanya Taqaq, director Caroline Monnet celebrates the fierce resourcefulness of Indigenous people in adapting to the dizzying changes of the past century.
On the walls of the gallery is a selection of new paintings by John Player. Player’s choice of images are diverse and far reaching, each one a piece in a puzzle of relational aesthetics and free-association. The stories and contexts of each painting are individually significant, while the ensemble evokes a message. The works selected here have a broader relation to the overuse, misuse and neglect of natural resources and romantic ideals of nature.
At first glance, Ripley Whiteside’s suite of drawings appear as menageries of colourful and exotic aquatic species. However, Whiteside’s juxtaposition of rare, beautiful and foreign underwater species now found in the Greater Toronto Area is informed by a deeper investigation of the ecological consequences of both aquacultural development and our need for spectacle.