ARTIST RECEPTION:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 2011
5:30 P.M. TO 9 P.M.
ARTIST TALK:
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 2011
2 P.M.
PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY is pleased to present FIGHT / FLIGHT, an exhibition of new works by Halifax photo-based artist and NSCAD Professor SUSAN MCEACHERN.
In our desire to seek a balance between the personal and the social, the constructed and the natural, there is a constant pressure to discover the basic and fundamental. Susan McEachern's study of horses and the history and significance of the horse-human partnership has allowed her to reside in what feels like a simultaneous past and present. To McEachern, horses seem to have been human companions from the very first; they are represented in the first known human-made images. Their history parallels human history, and so their needs have paralleled human needs. Grass is the essential need of both. Grasses, too, have an engaged history and relationship with humans who have, with the assistance of horses, cultivated and transported selected species of grass over the millennium. The works in this exhibition are a mark of McEachern's efforts to understand her bond with these other members of the natural world.
Using photography as her principal visual medium, Susan McEachern has produced a number of projects that take, as their point of departure, lived experience. Through many of these experiences, McEachern discerns qualities of the gender-determined path of her explorations. She has produced projects, through image and text, whose titles describe an entry point for her inquiries: The Home, The Family in the context of Childrearing, On Living at Home, The Creation of Desire, Questions of Nature, Backyard Community, and, most recently, Structures of Meaning, a retrospective exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. She has exhibited her work extensively in Canada, and internationally in the U.S., Korea, Poland, and New Zealand. McEachern is a Professor of Media Arts at NSCAD University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is the Editorial Director of The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work can be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; The Dalhousie Art Gallery; The Canada Council Art Bank; The Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta; The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon; The Nova Scotia Art Bank; Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery, Halifax; and The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota; a Senior Diploma in Visual Communication and Photography from The Banff Centre, School of Fine Arts, Banff, Alberta; a Masters of Arts, Sociology in Education, Feminist Studies and Gender Relations from The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto; and is a graduate of the Digital Media Design Program, MacKenzie College in Halifax.
