BARBARA COLE: Falling Through Time

Expand

Barbara Cole

Barbara Cole, "Falling Through Time," nd

chromogenic print face-mounted to plexiglass, back-mounted to hidden aluminum channel.

Artist Reception: Saturday, April 1, 2-4PM

Artist Talk begins at 2PM  

Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to present Barbara Cole's latest series, Falling Through Time as part of the 2017 Capture Photography Festival. 

Falling Through Time is a resurfacing—of not just time and place, but Cole too, who collaborates with a past self. An incomplete project comes full circle as the English garden series becomes background to the artist’s captivating underwater portraits. The result is a visual study of time in which personal and mythical histories—refracted through the water surface—layer to create ethereal scenes with an editorial edge. “These women do not exist in a moment in time,” says Cole, but rather alongside it, as extra-temporal travelers who float between history’s layers with confidence and mystery.

Cole’s project began 20 years ago, when, while traveling, the artist became enamored with the incomparable gardens of England. She was inspired by their romantic ambience: whimsical lattices, wiry brambles, and lush roses, all overseen by classically inspired statues draped in fabrics—impossibly weightless despite their stone medium. Capturing these whimsical spaces with her Polaroid SX-70 film, and later manipulating the malleable photographic surface to painterly effect, Cole’s documentation produced a series truly romantic in both history and conception. Still, Cole felt that the project was somehow incomplete; her English garden series was stored away, and soon forgotten.

Watch Barbara Cole's documentary about the making of Falling Through Time 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Barbara Cole is an award-winning Canadian photographer who is known for her distinct underwater photography. Cole has exhibited internationally and is extensively collected by both public and private institutions.

Throughout her career Cole has worked internationally on commercial projects and has created several large-scale commissions, including installations for the atrium at the M. Lau Breast Cancer Centre in Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital. Her series Underworld was exhibited at the Canadian Embassies in Tokyo and Washington, D.C.

Cole has won prestigious awards such the Grand Prize at the Festival International de la Photographie de Mode in Cannes, and third prize at the International Photography Awards in New York. In 2012, the acclaimed documentary series Snapshot: The Art of Photography II featured an episode devoted exclusively to Cole’s photographic practice.  Barbara Cole lives and works in Toronto, Canada.