For Immediate Release
Jessica Eaton March 27th-April 26th
Opening Reception: Friday, March 27th 7-11 p.m.
Artist in Attendance
© jessica eaton
Opening on March 27th, Hunter and Cook is pleased to present a show of recent works by photographer Jessica Eaton.
Eaton’s works are experiments in the poetry that emerges from deconstructing the processes of analogue photography and attempting to execute easily- achieved digital imaging techniques inside the box of a large-format analogue camera. Unlike digital photography, which permits the photographer to wield a greater degree of control over process–and therefore, the resultant image–analogue photography finds itself more at the mercy of contingency. In an Eaton photograph, the happenstance element becomes an agent of creation: subject matter is suspended and transformed, making moments of compelling confusion, where the viewer is allowed to reflect on the ephemeral nature of time, space, and perceptual reality.
Powerfully demonstrative of these qualities is the large c-print Quantum Pong 3. Here, a hovering mass of delicate spheres (in this case, 512 released ping pong balls) drifts within the picture frame, suggesting an eruption of bubbles, or a wafting cloud of atomized matter. Adding to the picture’s mesmerizing nature is the fact that multiple exposures render a great number of the spheres translucent. This throws into question not only the physical integrity of the object but also the ability of the viewer to judge spatial relationships within the frame—and therefore ascertain what his/her position is as an observer. In the triptych Spectral High Light Travels in Straight Lines, the viewer is presented with three life-sized prints of graph paper sheets. The left hand sheet holds a standard image of the paper; however the sheets to the right of the initial image find themselves being taken over by alternate grids of delicate stars. Created by pricking holes in board mounted behind the paper and shining light (split with a cross hair filter) through the holes, these works allow the viewer to witness and enjoy the willfulness of light, harnessed for an instant, and yet doing what it does naturally, to magical effect. Indeed magical is the operative word in describing the works of Jessica Eaton. Like the spiritualist photographs of the 19th century, they are suggestive of that otherness that lies beyond the controlled factors of the eye, the hand and the machine–the infinite. They promise to the viewer a set of experiences that is both challenging and a source of great unexpected pleasure.
Alexandra Oliver, March 2009
Jessica Eaton is an emerging photographer based in Toronto and Vancouver. She holds a BFA from the Emily Carr University and has exhibited in galleries in Canada and the United States. Her work has been featured in numerous publications. This is Eaton’s first solo show in Toronto.
Alexandra Oliver is a poet and art writer based in Toronto and Vancouver. She holds an MA from the University of Toronto, has published in journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States and Europe, and has read her work for CBC Radio and NPR. Her first book, Where the English Housewife Shines was published in 2007 by Tin Press London.
Hunter and Cook
15 Ossington Ave, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 2Y8
T: 416 588 3500
www.hunterandcook.com
