During the BMW Exhibition Prize Gala on Thursday May 17 at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Lise Beaudry was presented with the award for her exhibition Sur la glace / Walking on Ice, currently on view at the Art Gallery Of Mississauga until July 8. The annual BMW prize of $5,000 acknowledges an outstanding exhibition in CONTACT 2012. 

Sur la glace / Walking on Ice is part of Lise Beaudry’s ongoing investigation into the culture of the Ontario north. Returning to the Franco-Ontarian lake community where she grew up, Beaudry documents a landscape she knows personally. Her photographic series of monochromatic studies, WhiteScapes (2010), create an abstract portrait of the temporal states of ice and snow. Shot under grey cloud cover, the artist carefully considers the angle of view, aperture, exposure, and printing process to create images that attempt to expose the limits of the photograph. As the artist says, “they appear to be of almost nothing.” Suggesting the experience of walking to the centre of a frozen lake, these photos point to a spiritual subtext–implying a rite of sacred navigation.

Beaudry’s video projection, Zone (2011), uses an underwater camera to capture the grey-tone beauty of water moving beneath the cover of snow and ice. The work’s audio component, made in collaboration with media artist and composer Michelle Irving, was produced by submerging microphones under the frozen lake. Zone’s muffled bass and the echo of sound, experienced with headphones, provide an ambient soundtrack for the viewing of quiet and minimal images.

For the opening reception on May 10, A FREE Bus from the Gladstone Hotel will depart at 6pm and return to the Gladstone at 8pm from the Art Gallery of Mississauga.

The AGM’s Project Room provides a platform for emerging artists to exhibit alongside the central exhibition. The AGM is committed to nurturing emerging talent, and is thrilled to announce the Project Room’s inaugural exhibition — New Cultural Topographic: the Plaza by Mississauga-based Morris Lum.

Lum documents the plaza spaces of New Canadian Chinese communities located in the suburbs of Ontario cities. Within this new body of work, empty spaces highlight the impersonal nature of modernity. Lum captures these marginal places at night; the contrast between neon signs and dark backgrounds creates a sense of social isolation and unease.

Curated by Stuart Keeler