Leala Hewak: Richly Appointed (Character Studies)
to
Library Gallery (L'Briary) 540-70 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1G4
Opening Reception: Friday, 7 September 2018 6-9 pm
Richly Appointed (Character Studies) is a selection of prints from Toronto-based photographer Leala Hewak’s work The Weight of Air—A Picture Parade of Peter Dickinson’s Buildings. For this series of 341 photographs, Hewak took pictures in and around the extant buildings and former sites of buildings by Peter Dickinson, a Canadian modernist architect who produced almost a hundred built works before his untimely death at the age of 35 in 1961. Most of his buildings were erected in Toronto, and balance tasteful restraint with playful dandyism; many are now in the process of being demolished.
First shown at YYZ Artist’s Outlet in Toronto in July 2017, Richly Appointed (Character Studies illustrates Hewak’s practice of synthesizing the animate and the inanimate, as in some of the most intimate pictures in the series. Exhibition curator: Cliff Eyland
“These pictures defy normal architectural photography, which is mostly promotional, for images that subvert the modernist idealism in the work and the documentation of architects such as Peter Dickenson.” – Cliff Eyland
Rather than taking conventional architectural “beauty shots,” Hewak approaches these places as living things, as a brief encounter—photographing details, exteriors, and sometimes people or pets who inhabit his buildings by adopting the snapshot approach of Ruscha and the on-the-fly compositional strategies of Friedlander. She considers her works variously as “cautious introductions, discreet surveillances, and warm handshakes with old acquaintances—jokes recalled, concerns expressed, old friends missed. New plans are made with the best intentions, appointments arranged which may or may not be kept, depending on circumstances beyond our control.”
Hewak, who lived in Winnipeg for more than 15 years where she ran Cream Gallery in the early 2000’s and collaborated with artists William Eakin, Cliff Eyland and Craig Love, is delighted to be returning for this show at Library Gallery (L’Briary).
The Weight of Air—A Picture Parade of Peter Dickinson’s Buildings was shown in May 2017 at Toronto’s Sony Centre (which Peter Dickinson designed) along with Don Hewak’s companion piece Camelot, a multimedia exploration/exploitation of 1960’s press material from the Sony Centre’s archives .
A catalogue from the Sony Centre show, as well as book of 341 plates from this series, entitled The Weight of Air: A Picture Parade of Peter Dickinson’s Buildings, was published by Nutty Club Press in 2017.
Hewak is part of the Toronto-based collective Nutty Club, who presented the group show Souvenir in July 2018, also at Ramon’s Tailor Gallery. She is currently working on a series documenting the fantastical work of Canadian architect Uno Prii.
Info
Closed Permanently