Eamon Mac Mahon, "Woodland Caribou," 2011

Circuit Gallery presents
SCENES FROM HERE
Eamon Mac Mahon
Jim Verburg

May 3 – 26, 2012

Circuit Gallery at Gallery 345
345 Sorauren Avenue
Toronto ON, M6R 2G5

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 3, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Meet the Artists: Saturday, May 5, 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12 noon - 5:00 p.m., or by appointment
Exhibition Contact: Claire Sykes | tel.: 647-477-2487 | email: claire@circuitgallery.com

Circuit Gallery is pleased to present SCENES FROM HERE as a Featured Exhibition in the 2012 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

This exhibition seeks to bring forward something of our complex and ambiguous relationship with nature, its role in our imaginary (specifically as represented in landscape) and our different experience and understanding of its reality (its strength and fragility). SCENES FROM HERE presents the work of two photographers, Eamon Mac Mahon and Jim Verburg, whose considerably different interests in the natural landscape both seem predicated on a sense of disconnect and loss.

Mac Mahon is fascinated by our ideas and impressions of the 'wilderness', and the constant push-pull of man versus nature. He invites us to consider the range of attitudes that we have towards nature and to being in the natural world. In a series of non-prescriptive images that focus on visual anecdotes: particular places, moments, and incidents, he effectively reveals our ambiguous relationship with nature, recognizing both its power as something unforgiving, destructive and "bigger than us" and its fragility as something in need of protection.

Jim Verburg's photographs are not about specific places or nature itself, rather they are projections of psychic space—anthropomorphized conduits of moods and experience. The landscape and nature, often formally reduced to basic forms and elements (circles, light, water, fire, wood), function here as motif for the larger themes he explores in his work: interpersonal relationships, ideas of self and other, and our connectedness and difference.

Artist Bios

Eamon Mac Mahon
Eamon Mac Mahon is a photographer/videographer currently based in Montreal. Mac Mahon's photographs have appeared in various publications including the Walrus, National Geographic, and the New Yorker, as well as exhibition spaces such as the Griffin Museum of Photography, Higher Pictures NYC and San Jose's Institute of Contemporary Art. A large-scale, year-long exhibition of his 'Landlocked' series, described as 'magnificent and mysterious' by the Globe and Mail, was presented at Toronto's Pearson International Airport during CONTACT 2008. His video work has been exhibited at The Power Plant, The Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Music Gallery in Toronto. Mac Mahon also spends much of his time creating video projections for stage productions. He has been named one of PDN's 30, published in three of Magenta's 'Flash Forward' books, and nominated for the Prix Pictet. (website: www.eamonmacmahon.com)

Jim Verburg
Jim Verburg is a citizen of Canada and the Netherlands, he currently lives and works in Toronto. His artistic practice is mainly concerned with the complexities of relationships. Working with photography, video, text, installation, and print to explore his love of modernist aesthetics, emotional matters, and the interpersonal. His second film For a Relationship won the 2008 Jury Prize for the Best Canadian Short Film at the Inside Out Film Festival in Toronto. The work was also nominated for the Iris Prize in the UK. He's held residencies at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in Montreal, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta. In the spring of 2009 he had a solo exhibition/ installation at Widmer and Theodoridis Contemporary in Zurich, and was featured by the gallery at the HOT ART Fair 2009 in Basel Switzerland. Recent exhibitions include Portrait Study at the New Stage of National Theatre in Prague, Domestic Queens at the FOFA Gallery in Montreal, So Many Letdowns Before We Get Up at Platform Gallery Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts in Winnipeg, and the C magazine group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) in Toronto. Verburg's solo show One and Two opened last fall at Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal, the show was also awarded the 2011 Dazibao prize. (website: www.jimverburg.com)

SCENES FROM HERE runs May 3 through 26 at Gallery 345, with an opening reception on Thursday May 3, from 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.. The artists will be in attendance.
"Meet the Artists" on Saturday, May 5, from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Please visit Circuit Gallery online to see and learn more:
http://www.circuitgallery.com

ABOUT CIRCUIT GALLERY
Circuit Gallery specializes in works by emerging and established contemporary artists with an emphasis on photographic, digital and print-based works on paper.

Circuit Gallery
Web: www.circuitgallery.com
Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487