PICTURE THIS! DOCUMENTING THE FUTURE
Holly Marie Armishaw, Luc Choquer, Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge
and images from other vernacular sources

Guest Curator : Robert Graham

The exhibition runs from August 30 to September 29, 2001

Robert Graham will be giving a talk entitled Goal Imagery and Other Pictures of the Future at Dazibao on Saturday, September 22 at 2 p.m.

Picture This! Documenting the Future is presented and organised by Dazibao for the Mois de la photo àMontréal, within the thematic section The Power of the Image.

In Michael Mann's 1981 film Thief, Frank, (James Cann) is a safecracker who wants to take his loot and retire. In his wallet he carries a photo collage put together from newspaper and magazine clippings that represent his goals of marriage, having a nice house, raising a family. Unlike typical wallet photos portraying one,s past, Frankís collage is his blueprint for a desired future. He is proposing another way in which photography can function: as a means for showing that which has not yet occurred, a visualization of that which is absent or missing.

Picture This! Documenting the Future, brings together the work of artists Holly Marie Armishaw (Vancouver), Luc Choquer (France), Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge (Toronto), illustrating photographyís ability to provide material visualization of not yet achieved goals, the revery of aspirations, articulated nightmares and the contest of alternate futures.

Holly Marie Armishawís Human Genome Project casts biotechnology into a possible future where human genes are marketed as a designer commodity. This work portrays how current science and current marketing could combine to produce a future nightmare. In Fragments du Futur, Luc Choquer consulted people about their hopes for their futures, then in a collaborative process produced a fabricated realization of these desires. Though artificial and theatrical, these results serve as rehearsals for their aspirations. Well known for their engaged critiques of contemporary society and culture, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge,s work Political Landscapes, The second Meeting and Free Expression, present plausible models – though always through their non-naturalist aesthetic – of a world different and improved.

The work of these four artists, as well as examples from other, vernacular, sources (motivational posters, architectural renderings, age progressed images of missing children, and clips from the film Thief), show ways in which photography, the medium of recording the present and preserving the past, can be used, subjunctively, to portray contingent futures dreamed of, anticipated, hoped for or feared.

Holly Marie Armishaw was born in 1976 in Lacombe, Alberta, where she lived until the age of eighteen when she left home to pursue an education in the Fine Arts. After attending preliminary studies at Canadian University College and Red Deer College, Armishaw left for Vancouver; there, she attended Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design where she completed a BFA in Photography in 2000. Since graduating, Armishaw has been pursuing independent projects in research and production.

Luc Choquer is a co-founder of the Métis agency. He was born in the Paris area in 1952. In 1982 he joined the photo agency Vu and was soon freelancing with publications such as Actuel, Libération, Géo, etc. In 1989 he published Planète France, and in 1991 he was awarded the Prix Villa Médicis Hors les Murs. In 1992 he was a laureate for the Prix Niépce, exhibited at the Centre National de la photographie, and published L'Archipel des sept îles (Éditions Marval) and Regard social, Regards d'artistes (CCAS). Since 1995 he has been working on a project called Fragments du futur.

Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge live and work in Toronto. They have collaborated with various trade unions and community organizations in the production of their staged photographic work over the past 25 years. Their work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally in the trade union movement, as well as appearing in galleries and museums. Recently, their work has been included in exhibitions at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, and they also recently completed a public art project with the CEPA Gallery in Buffalo.

Robert Graham was born in Montréal in 1950 where he did undergraduate and graduate work in communication studies at McGill University, and where he continues to live. Since 1980 he has been writing criticism on art, architecture, culture, and photography, for magazines such as Parachute, CV Photo, C, Muse, and Exposure. He has also written catalogue essays for the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the MusÈe d'art contemporain de MontrÈal. He has twice received 'B' grants in Criticism and Curating (Visual Arts) from the Canada Council.