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Guests of the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in downtown Owen Sound can now view a photographic history of the city, works by one of Canada’s most renowned and mysterious artists, and a thought-provoking collection of photographic overlays depicting Lake Huron – all in about 200 steps.
The art gallery officially opened its three newest exhibits on Saturday afternoon. Gallery director Aidan Ware said the arts scene is booming in the Scenic City. Citing high attendance and sold-out fundraising events. Ware said, “things for us could not be better.”
The new exhibits are J. James: Living Histories, guest curated by Richard J. Thomas, and at the art gallery until March 16, 2024; Susan Dobson: Parallax, at the gallery until March 2, 2024; and Tom Thomson: enigma, on display until May 25, 2024.
J, James Living History features historical photographs by local photographer J. James, which illuminate the history of Owen Sound.
As part of the exhibition, the gallery hosted a community initiative called Living Histories Photo Sharing Project, a day connecting members of the public with Thomas, a local historian, to share their historic photographs of Owen Sound and related stories.
Thomas said he was writing his first novel when he went to seek out old images of the city to get a better sense of the setting for his book. He went to the Foto art store in downtown Owen Sound and was shown a stack of glass negatives as tall as he was.
Those were photos by J. James, who once owned and operated the store in Owen Sound and was the city’s main street photographer.
“Back in those days they would get new equipment in and test it out by taking a shot down the main street,” Thomas said.
Thomas credited Peter Ciokan and Robert Cotton of Grey-Bruce Image Archives for preserving and digitizing much of the collection.
“J. James’ photographs bring forward a certain nostalgia, they also provide a more consolidated sense of Owen Sound as a fledgling city in all its incarnations – port town, industry mecca, bootlegger bastion,” the exhibit’s online description reads.
“We tend to think this city never changes. I’ve heard that ever since I moved here, we think of things as unchanging, but this proves it’s not,” Thomas said.
Parallax, an exhibition by renowned Canadian artist Susan Dobson, presents large-scale photographs of the Great Lakes from Susan Dobson’s Viewfinder and Focus Finder series.
Dobson, an associate professor at the University of Guelph, uses an old large format camera – the kind with an accordion-looking front end and black cloth cover the photographer drapes over themselves.
Those cameras use ground glass viewers, and many photographers mark up their viewers by scratching, drawing or making marks on them. Dobson said they become like personal artifacts.
The romantic-looking images, scenic lake views distorted by the patina of the viewfinders, that comprise one-half of the exhibit, take a seemingly sinister turn when Dobson begins to overlay more modern view-finding technologies over the scenes of Lake Huron, including those used in facial-recognition programs.
Dobson said when she made those images she was living in a cabin on the shores of Lake Huron during the pandemic. Dobson attributed her anxieties at the time to the change in tone.
Dobson said she purposefully has the titles of the pieces set away from the artwork and does not include long descriptions of the images.
“If it’s too straightforward it doesn’t allow for personal interpretation,” she said.
Cumulatively, Dobson’s work explores themes of photographic materiality, photographic history and its viewing devices, voyeurism, and surveillance.
Tom Thomson: enigma, brings together a selection of Tom Thomson’s paintings and artifacts alongside works by contemporary artists Marlene Creates and Tim Whiten from the gallery’s collection.
When it comes to Thomson, much is left unknown about one of the country’s most popular painters. How did he die? What did he think about his art? What would he think about how it’s viewed now?
“There was no manifesto. There is hardly any written history,” Bingeman said.
“We tend to fill in the gaps with our own conjecture,” she said. “Like an empty vessel.”
Bingeman said the decision to include work from contemporary artists was made to help carry the conversation into the present day.
“People love a mystery. When they don’t have an ending to the story it’s unnerving,” she said.
The free-to-attend event on Saturday featured snacks from The Milk Maid and a cash bar.
