The Department of Visual Arts is proud to present Canadian photographer Jessica Eaton as the latest guest to appear in their long-running Visiting Artist program. Recently described by the UK’s Guardian newspaper as “the hottest photographic artist to come out of Canada since Jeff Wall,” the Montreal-based Eaton is acclaimed for her innovative experiments in color photography.
An example of Jessica Eaton’s unique photographic manipulations
She’ll be presenting a free illustrated lecture of her work and practices at 8pm Wednesday, Feb 18 in room 162 of the Visual Arts building. All are welcome.
Working with large format cameras, she applies unique analog techniques to manipulate properties of light. By creating photographic practice experiments blending and splitting light using lenses and geometric forms, Eaton creates photographs whose subject is light itself.
In her vibrant images she pushes the rhetoric of abstraction to provoke questions about perceptual experience. “[Analog photography] doesn’t have to be intrinsically bound to the visible world,” she says. “It is full of possibility.”
As noted in the Guardian article, Eaton uses light the way other painters mix colours and her images offer referential nods to colour field painting and the likes of Bridget Riley, Josef Albers and Sol LeWitt. And while her images may look like they came out of a Photoshop experiment, they’re actually the result of technical expertise and “hit-and-miss, old-school technology.”
Jessica Eaton in her studio (photo: Roger LeMoyne, from Canadian Art)
“My fuck-up rate is pretty high,” she admits. “On average, one work out of every 200 sheets of film. I think of it as a kind of strategy game. There is a lot of waiting and concentration involved.”
Born in Regina and trained at Vancouver’s Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Eaton has shown across Canada and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions in Toronto, Los Angeles and Cleveland, and a solo show at the Photographers’ Gallery/The Hospital Club in London, UK. She is represented by Jessica Bradley (Toronto), Higher Pictures (New York), and M + B Gallery (Los Angeles).
So far this year, the Visiting Artist series has welcomed the likes of Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada, and sculptor Michel de Broin. Coming up next is Nigel Prince, executive director of Vancouver’s
Contemporary Art Gallery (March 4) and painter Melanie Authier (March 18).