Upcoming event – May 4, 2016
THE POST IMAGE RESEARCH CLUSTER PRESENTS:
JACQUES BELLAVANCE – FIRST CONTACT
WEDNESDAY MAY 4, 2016 @ 12:00 noon
Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology
Concordia University
1515 Saint Catherine Street W.
EV Building, Room 10.715
“It is with this in mind that I undertook the hour long subway ride towards the outskirts of Shanghai, where the normally fluorescent lights of the rail system were replaced by the partly clouded sky as the train returned above ground. The dense metropolis slowly faded into rice fields, run down shacks and construction sites erecting clusters of high-rise apartments.
[…]
As I was following the road that led to the city center, I asked myself whether I was being directed. Unlike an actual city where the core is usually accessible through multiple routes, Thames Town’s streets forced you, much like a roller coaster, to contour a series of residential compounds before letting you reach its public spaces. Making the citizen walk by these mansions had every intention of generating desires: the desire to reside in these lavish houses or to at least take a closer look; desires that were soon crushed by a security guard dressed in a full Beefeater-inspired uniform. A Chinese man who, as he watched over the mostly deserted houses, took his job very seriously.â€
Excerpts from First contact, Thames Town, from personal travel notes, 2013
Untitled 255, from Thames Town DeÌrive, chromogenic print, 30 in x 40 in, 2013
This lunchtime discussion will delve into the preliminary research and points of reference of Bellavance’s long-term project, shedding light onto his sustained artistic involvement with the city of Shanghai and its non-spaces; this engagement with this specific city as subject eventually evolved into the solo exhibition One City, Nine Towns, currently on display in the FOFA Gallery’s York Corridor Vitrines, now and until May 27, 2016.
Jacques Bellavance is an artist whose work primarily revolves around narrative-based photography, where indexical, staged and constructed images are central to the progression of the story. His practice is multidisciplinary and predominantly involves photography and sculpture. Currently researching themes of simulacrum, reconstruction and identity, his photographs draw upon the intertwining of documentary-style and narrative driven self-exploration to unearth aspects of his Chinese heritage. He is a current MFA candidate in Studio Arts, concentration Photography.