Angela Grossmann was introduced to the Canadian art world in 1985 as one of the Young Romantics, a group of artists who were part of a major new art movement emerging in Vancouver. Since then her mixed media paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Correction(s) is Grossmann's most recent body of work. Her research into the Canadian penal system actually began five years ago in a Vancouver junk shop when she found a package containing data from a BC prison. The files had somehow found their way through the channels of ephemera buffs, and Grossmann was able to purchase them for just a few dollars each. The documents contained very personal and revealing information: the names and addresses of families and friends, medical and criminal histories, and descriptions of prisoners' "amenity to discipline."

The crimes that had been committed were, for the most part, petty and ranged from vagrancy to minor fraud. The penalties, however, were severe and often included corporal punishment in the form of 'lashes' and jail terms of three or more years.

One of the most revealing things Grossmann discovered when reading the prison files was the lack of attention given to data inputting by the chief keepers. In one instance, what was reported initially as a 'burglary' was within the same document recorded as 'buggery.' With such oversights, one can only wonder how closely the penalties really related to the crimes.

The Kamloops Art Gallery has produced a catalogue of the exhibition Correction(s) with essays by Susan Edelstein, Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Matthew G. Yeager, a clinical criminologist based in Ottawa. Yeager specializes in sentencing alternatives and parole in North America. The catalogue will be available in the Gallery Store.

Angela Grossmann is represented by Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver.