Withheld exhibit displays bold and abstract photography by students
Friday April 8, 2016, the Photo IV class had their opening at The Boarding House Gallery, hilariously named Withheld. The poster was blank with the title of the show printed on it, along with the date, time, and location of the opening. A photo class that doesn’t put a photo on their poster is just awesome.
Students Jaimie Aitken, Lisa Arnold, Michael Beckmann, Sydney Bouwers, Edward Chow, Victoria Coles, Siobhan Kiely, Rachel Meneguzzi, Mansoor Naderi, Jordan Palmieri, and Marije Stryker presented their work at the Boarding House using techniques like photo boxes and zines. The class was lead by Susan Dobson, an established artist who works with photography in her own artistic practice. The students in Photo IV worked on this show all semester, carefully planning their ideas and installation techniques. The opening was absolutely packed with masters of fine arts students, professors, studio art students, alongside family and friends. Of course there was plenty of food along with a cake with the students’ artwork printed onto it.
Even though this was a photography class’s show, there was a variety of techniques used to create and present their photos. Arnold created an abstract photo, using the colour dark room, then showed it to people at retirement homes and schools asking for descriptions of the photo. She then created the zine “Twenty-One Descriptions” with these descriptions which gallery goers could take away with them.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]…displayed a semester’s worth of work in the gallery…[/pullquote]
Beckman created his series, “Untitled,”
Other students made bold moves through creating light boxes, like Aitken did for her series “Slow Looking.” Other students tried their hand at putting images on photo boards with the unfortunate result of warping as the boarding curved away from the wall. It was a shame because the works on the boards were lovely!
Palmieri had a great installation with his photos “Is this how you fun?” pasted straight onto the wall and in corners. His subject matter was apparent after a brief head tilt in front of his work. His subjects were obviously waiting for something exciting or interesting to happen to record on social media, as he explained in his artist statement.
The Boarding House show was a great way to end the semester for these students as they displayed a semester’s worth of work in the gallery for their peers to see. With Kazoo! Fest going on last weekend, people from out of town were able to view their work as well. This show was an amazing example of the kind of work produced by upper year studio art students and it’s great to see this work moving in to spaces outside of Zavitz Hall.