Brains Aflame by Point Grey Art Careers 12
A student response to James Welling’s “Mind on Fire”
exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery.
On Thursday December twelfth the Point Grey Secondary grade
twelve Art Careers class visited the Contemporary Art Gallery for a full day workshop. We explored James Welling’s exhibition with a
focus on curatorial practice and conceptual art practices. As part of our investigation we undertook an
experiential response to Welling’s working methods by conducting a photo-shoot
in which students were asked to explore in-camera abstraction techniques. The students were interested in questioning
our assumptions of perception and the photographic image as well as how the
inherent ambiguity affected the reading of an image. The students met afterward to discuss and
edit the images and categorize them based on the abstraction technique or
subject matter of the photographs. In
effect the students curated an exhibition of photography, taking a cue from
Welling in grouping images based on intended effect.
This group of amazing artists includes Cosette Bote, Kevin McAllum, Aly Slobadov, Kiel Torres, Nancy Tseng and Catherine Wang.
Below is the first grouping of photographs affectionately titled "Ombre" by the students. Stay tuned for the rest of the exhibition in future posts. The Contemporary Art Gallery also posted their own blog exhibition of the student's work here.
Aly Slobadov
Cosette Bote