9 September 2011 through 9 October 2011
Opening reception Friday 9 September 2011, 6-9pm
Guest curated by Alex Pensato
Since the eighties Arni Haraldsson has amassed a vast collection of found imagery gathered from various religious publications such as Awake! and Plain Truth that were made available to him while out strolling in his neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant. Haraldsson clipped the photographic images from these publications and assorted them into various categories. The resulting deconstructed forms and groupings of found images simultaneously espouse the religious and utopic pedagogical intent of their publications and the personal aspirations and hopes of the local Mt. Pleasant followers who distributed them. Taken as such, Awake in Mt. Pleasant can be seen as an unorthodox portrait of the artist's neighbourhood.
Arni Haraldsson has exhibited his photographic work nationally and internationally for the past two decades. Recent exhibitions include Les Lendemains d’hier (Yesterday’s Tomorrows) at Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal; Lugar/Place festival PhotoEspana at the Museu Berardo in Lisbon; and Ze Lino (Copan Project) at Casa Vertigo in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Haraldsson has done numerous residencies, including the Canada Council studios in London and Paris. He has contributed to publications such as EXIT, Fillip, Pyramid Power and Canadian Art. Much of his work has focused on key modernist sites from around the world, often undergoing states of transition. His work generally poses the built environment as emblematic of larger social forces, instrumental in the formation of human relations.
