Sarah Crawley, Annie MacDonell and Mandy Malazdrewich, "The Time Travellers," Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg, April 15 to May 28, 2016

by

Time, as a subject, has been so thoroughly parsed that artists are hard-pressed to say anything new. Entering the gallery, I expected to find the usual ingredients for an exhibition about time; fracturing of linear narratives, densities of mist, plenty of blurring. I was right. What I wasn’t expecting was a pitch-perfect masterfully calibrated piece of storytelling that put my cynicism to shame.

Ontario artist Annie MacDonell’s video The Fortune Teller focuses on an antique hand, the sort that might have belonged to a penny arcade mannequin with a name like Madame Zelda. The hand’s tapered resin fingers have cracks and fissures, and the video documents their restoration. The psychological hook goes deep – there’s something so heartening about watching a discarded and broken object return to its former glory. But MacDonell doesn’t stop there. The manequin’s hand, a human hand and a human hand painted white move together in a mesmerizing series of pas de deux and pas de trois. Time is divided into past, present and future. But as each hand navigates the terrain of the others, these categories are revealed as too rational. Time is better understood in murkier, nonsensical ways. MacDonell’s choreography of entangled fingers and pressing palms is a carnival of pathos – beautiful, sad, ridiculous. She is on this year’s long list for the Sobey Art Award, and it’s easy to see why.

In her series, Family Histories, Winnipeg artist Mandy Malazdrewich alters historical family photographs. Old black-and-white photos, especially those of long-dead relatives, are magical in their own right. But Malazdrewich augments their ghostly resonance by reprinting and cutting out some figures. She places these new images into nature, re-photographing them with a pinhole camera. Inside each absent figure are tree branches, snowy fields, layers of distance. The pinhole effect suffuses each image with rich tones and an unearthly light.

Winnipegger Sarah Crawley is also known for her lush pinhole photography, but with The Dead Album she changes course, photographing pages of an album from the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. The photos were peeled away long ago, leaving rectangles of empty space with cramped cursive descriptions: “Leaving breakfast place before arriving at Prince Albert” or “Some of the inhabitants of Great Slave Lake.” The images documented inspection trips to trading posts in Western Canada. Crawley’s series acts as an important framing device, one with personal and political implications, and calls attention to gaps in our historical knowledge. When reading captions by the phantom photographer, only vague imagery appeared in my mind; a row of featureless, dark-skinned faces, a dim landscape awash in muddy browns and blues.

The Time Travellers is a thoughtful, sensitive show. Time, as a subject, is in good hands here.

Platform: Centre for Photographic & Digital Arts

121-100 Arthur St, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1H3

204-942-8183

please enable javascript to view

Visit Website

Open Wed to Sat noon - 5 pm.