Our friend Sean Orr has done a PROOF for V.I.A., he's published a BOOK of his photos and most recently has joined the editorial staff of our new buds over at Scout. Tonight at JD's Barbershop at 8pm Sean is launching a mostly new exhibit that's another chapter in a series he's been releasing over the years. The full rundown is below, Facebook event page HERE, and even if you don't read artspeak I assure you it'll be worth a visit.
The official word:
An extension of previous exhibitions by the artist and indeed an extension of the artist himself, Still Gone draws heavily on the practice of flaneuring, something that Orr has explored since his first show Contact at Dadabase, continuing with Homework at Antisocial, and his most previous show, and the accompanying book, Pretty Drifted. In this new show, Orr offers a retrospect of these shows by re-exhibiting the artist statement from Pretty Drifted and two pieces from Contact (London Drugs contact sheets blown up and encased in acrylic). Also included is a Walking Tour of Gastown, partly in reference to Alex Morrison's current show Making Beer More Expensive at Artspeak Gallery.
The centrepiece of the show is the image called Two Paths Diverged in a Wood, It was a Loop Trail - which is also the title to a song by the artist's band, Taxes. Part absurdist humour, part reference to the artist's mental health, the image plays on the dichotomies between the urban environment and nature, Occidental and Oriental, and left brain versus right brain.
The accompanying map, titled Towards a New Ontology, is an attempt to recreate a Situationist style psychogeographic study. The map is filled with Orr's personal observations including buildings in the DTES in which he can access the roof easily, documenting and naming certain beggars, and cheap places to eat. The map moves from west to east, from the artist's Gastown loft and into the crumbling back alleys of the DTES. His exploration of liminal space reveals the ever-changing frontier that has become the dominant narrative of photoconceptual art championed by Arden, Wall, Wallace, Douglas, Dikeakos, Bubas, Gergley, Macfarlane et al. Yet as Jeff Otto O'Brien wrote for Pretty Drifted, Orr taps into a collective consciousness similar to Lacan's Other.
The other piece, A Visual Representation Of is Orr's first foray into illustration. He describes it as an abstract simulation of his daily drift, outlining a similar silhouette as the map. Again, it is an insight to the artist psychic state. Perhaps one could even include Orr's work as former Morning Brew columnist on Beyond Robson, where he also would occasionally talk about Geomancy and The Derive. Described recenlty as a "depresseive cynic who, for the most part, just attacked anything that didn't meet his own obscure personal tastes" his take on the daily news very much influenced by his back alley meanderings and a neighbourhood he passionately defends.
