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The Roadway

This show of six 8"x10" contact chromogenic prints has been produced by the artist at Toronto Imageworks, Spadina Ave., a warehouse second-floor of digital and conventional studios and darkrooms where photographers ranging from excited students to hyperactive documentarists to plodding conceptualists intersect.   

The prints at Mandolin are part of an extended exploration of Canadian roadways that began in 1976 with a first exhibition, in 1979, in Joussard, AB., called "The Great Grey Canadian". That showing comprised about ten 3" x 4" cibachromes from 35mm slides and was simply a study of the visual pleasures of driving.

Another show on this theme was in 2000 at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton under the title "The Road Show". It was twenty 11" x 14" colour chromogenic prints with text by Ronald Hambleton and D. Wall. The show was supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and some of the prints were made at the Banff Centre. That show emphasized the story-telling potential of, and inter-dependency between, photographs and text, linked as they were so that the "pictures" were subdued/supported by the thousand words required. An internet version of that show can be found at   www.ualberta.ca/~walld/banff2.html . (See www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/gallery/retro/retro99.htm for a statement of another photographic show at the Museum).

The Mandolin showing begins an exploration both of the technical vibrancy of individual and highly detailed, baroque-like, images, possible only with large negatives like the ones used, and of whether the idea that "a picture is worth a thousand words" can still be a relevant notion. **

In the case of the three projects, the over-riding theme is as expressed by Baudriallard in America (NY: Verso, 1988), that the automobile, by extension the road, in particular SPEED, and visual thrill are central to North American culture.

** Each sells for $300 framed. Other prints in this series may be seen at  www.ualberta.ca/~walld/8x10studio.html.

Large prints, e.g., up to 30"x 40", will also be produced.

For artist CV see www.ualberta.ca/~walld/acv.html.