GRACE GORDON-COLLINS
Beyond the Obvious

March 2 - 18, 2006
Artist reception: March 2, 6-8 pm



Form, 2006 (ed. 1/5) archival digital c-print, 20 x 36 inches


Beyond the Obvious is a series of architectural photographs taken over time in the port areas of North Vancouver. Shipping containers and piles of plywood signify the inscrutable faces of ports worldwide. Contents cannot be seen and are not always examined by port authorities, masking the implicit danger of what might be hidden within.

Gordon-Collins has cropped many of the images to the point where they are pure geometric sensation. Some are almost abstract blocks of colour with just enough detail to provide context. A hint of scale is revealed by fragments of cardboard; a point of view indicated by a foggy sun above. A green lamppost is reduced to a solid vertical with just a sliver of a road sign showing. The series also includes images of people and place.

Grace Gordon-Collins has been a practising designer in British Columbia for over twenty-five years. Her award-winning skills encompass architecture, interior design and photography. She is a recent graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (BFA Photography, 2004) and has a Masters of Architecture (Photography Major, 1975) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she studied under Minor White. She began examining the “inherent truth” of object and place using abstracted views of shipping containers in her 2005 exhibit entitled Pulp.