Sara Angelucci’s Regular 8 returns film to its origin in the still image, while focusing on 1950s-era nuclear families. A period characterized by growing consumption, the 50’s also witnessed the spread of eight-millimeter home movies. Playing on the idiosyncratic interference caused by Kodak’s punch-hole tagging system – a series of numbers appearing across the end frames of each film – Angelucci makes poignant reference to the last moments of such movies. Preserved, yet already in the process of dissolution, these images describe moments of in-between. Evoking film theorist Andre Bazin’s characterizations of photography and film, these photographic moments are suspended like “insects in amber” while shifting perpetually between frames as “change mummified.”

Referencing scenes from found and borrowed films, Angelucci’s staged photographs portray celebrations and outings – where family and friends are often recast in idealized, cinematic versions of themselves. Angelucci both celebrates and interrupts the formation of such identities, pointing to the tensions that may exist outside of the frame. Using the qualities of analogue photography as the basis for a hybrid digital practice, Angelucci dips into the wells of multiple processes. In their convergence, she captures the still revolutionary force of the “mirror with a memory” to fascinate, disturb and seduce.

– Katy McCormick

Generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and Cabaret Vintage.

• Sara Angelucci is a Toronto-based artist and Adjunct Professor of Photography at Toronto Metropolitan University. For the past ten years her projects in photography, video, and audio have engaged with environmental concerns exploring the plight of birds, forests, and plants. Angelucci completed her BA at the University of Guelph and her MFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She has exhibited across Canada in the US, Europe, and China and been an artist in residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario, NSCAD (Halifax), the Banff Centre, and Biz-Art in Shanghai. She has been supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council, and was nominated for the 2022 Scotiabank Photography Award. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections.