Last week’s f/action photo exhibit at the Cre8ery gallery came to a close on Tuesday, and with it, all our prints came down. It was sad to dismantle it, but it had been a good few days of exhibiting our work we’d been working on for over a year and a half. Our “Made in China” exhibit drew several visitors and we were happy to share it with so many enthusiastic art-lovers. Even my dad, who needs art to be very literal and “normal” for him to understand it came out to see my abstract series! (though I think he preferred Dallas’ series of photographs from her trip to China).
My series explored the “made in China” phrase that reminds me of all the clothing I have in my closet – the disposable, cheap stuff I buy because it’s, well, cheap and easy to buy. Since knowing my husband, the idea of buying unethically made clothing has been on my mind a lot more, and work on this series brought me face to face with my closet and the origin of my clothes. I have to admit that I had a lot more clothing made in China than I realized, and to my shock, I pulled out a huge pile of it. My goal: to face it all, take it all, and create something dynamic and beautiful with it. I’m not big into finding trash and turning it into art – but this project felt a bit like that, and I was ok with it. I came face to face with the excess of clothing and material goods we seem to feel entitled to and I decided to make something productive with it, to make something I could hang on the wall and get inspired and moved by.
The result: a series of colourful shapes, lines and movement. I shot everything out of focus and with a slow shutter speed and made no rules about how to put it together. Everything came together as accidental beauties and the result actually did inspire and move me.
Here is my series, as well as some photos from the exhibit. F/action is Ailsa Dyson, Dallas Ludwick, Duncan McNairnay, and myself. Our blog can be found here and our next exhibit at the Cre8ery will be in April 2011. Stay tuned!
