Internationally renowned Montreal artist Donigan
Cumming has made it his life’s work as an artist to
explore aspects of human interaction – to explore
and document what is visible as much as unseen;
to consider what lies beyond the boundaries of an
image or the known circumstances of a person’s
life. The stories that emerge come as much from
the imagination and soul as they do from the heart
and body. Clearly this is not an easy task for the
artist or the community of people that he has
collaborated so closely with for so long. Donigan
Cumming is a storyteller and his work is as much
about life as it is about art.

When Cumming turned [from photography] to video
in 1995, he retained his actors/models just as he
maintained his fascination with what they evoked.
Cumming seeks to know about death and the
inroads of age and illness, drink and drugs; he
studies unwitting delusion and the circumstances
of self-destruction. Yet his subjects are survivors,
real people living their lives despite their
potential for squalor. We may feel guilty watching
here, a little unclean at the contact, virtual though it
may be. At the same time we are fascinated to
know more, to see more thoroughly, and our
curiosity can offend no one: these images already
exist.
This is the abject: mean, despicable, disheartening,
from the Latin abjectus, thrown away. Society’s
refuse is laid before us here, a proliferation of
unseemly bodies and crowded, debris-filled living
quarters, far distant from an approved vision of
youth, elegance, self-contained propriety and good
taste.

Peggy Gale (excerpt from Lying Quiet, published
by MOCCA in conjunction with the exhibition,
Moving Pictures)

Curated by Peggy Gale