Guest curator Jennifer Rudder presents works by Canadian artists Louise Noguchi, Sheila Ayearst, Angela Grossmann and British crime-scene photographer Jonathan Eeles. The show explores the visual encoding of criminality either in the banal facts of a physical "scene" or in the physiognomy of the criminal. Crime & Punishment contains the internal contradictions of its subject and thus curbs the tendency to spectacle inherent in this material. It exposes the penetration of convention, expectation and context in shaping the emotional impact of visual material. In each case, the cues of criminality are blurred and the comfortable categories of social difference are allowed to seep into one another.

In Louise Noguchi's Compilation Portraits, the artist interweaves strips of large scale, self-portrait photographs with photographs of murderers. This mingling of individual identity denies ready distinctions between innocence and culpability, and implies that the capacity to commit a crime lies within each of us.

Vancouver artist Angela Grossmann's paintings are based on mug shots of petty criminals that were retrieved from the files of the British Columbia Penitentiary before its closure. Grossmann overpaints the images, dressing them up clown-like with rouged cheeks, scarves and baubles in a gesture of desperately forced animation.

Toronto artist Sheila Ayearst has been painting the overpasses and vistas of highway 401 in Southern Ontario for the past seven years. In several of these pieces, she renders the sites at which crimes of abduction, murder or victim disposal have been committed. Ayearst's beautifully painted 401: Exit 133 is freighted with awareness of contamination by the criminal act.

Jonathan Eeles' black and white photographs document alleged crime scenes in South London, U.K. His work is used for in-court presentations to allow the facts of the physical setting to support analysis of testimony and physical evidence. The images serve as tools for rational assessment of a case, tools that the artist believes disrupt the media-fed rush to convict.

Crime & Punishment reflects and comments on society's fascination with crime and criminality. The examination of responses to the criminal is especially relevant, given rising rates of incarceration and a steady increase in public surveillance, changes that seem to lead toward a society Toronto defence lawyer Edward Greenspan describes as a "prison without walls." This exhibition reflects on issues of fear and social control that are most often taken for granted or quickly suppressed. The works take on the charged aura that clings to the criminal and the crime scene, an aura that ultimately punishes by isolating its subject.

An opening reception for the show was held on Saturday, 20 March, from 7-9 pm. A panel discussion, "Expert Witness: Representing the criminal in art," took place on Sunday, 21 March, from 2-3:30 pm. For this event, Jennifer Rudder acted as moderator; artists Jonathan Eeles, Kyo Maclear, Louise Noguchi and Toronto-based critic and psychiatrist Jeanne Randolph participated.

Publication: An illustrated catalogue with an essay by Jennifer Rudder accompanies the show.

The exhibition, its program and publication are supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the London Arts Board (U.K.).