Manifestation internationale d'art de Québec

RAYMONDE APRIL

Méduse Coopérative, June 23 to August 14, 2005

Montréal Université Exposition Hall, March 2 to April 2, 2006

EXHIBITION BIFURCATIONS

Today, landscape is most widely seen as referring to the sensory or aesthetic relationship we maintain with the natural environment. Is it possible to imagine extracting some essential aspects of the landscape from a specific place, in this case landscape as expressed in the recent photographs of Raymonde April ? Why not ? A particular conception of landscape is at work here, a sensitivity that favours an emotional rapport with the nature of inhabited space.

Produced in 2004, the photographs of Bifurcations comprise two main categories : a series of individual images (Sentier national), presented as a succession of variations on the landscape, and a regrouping of images (Dix images seules) showing scenes of family life and furtive moments experienced among friends. If the first category addresses the question of familiarity with places and the memories they recall, the second takes a completely different tack and functions more like a long panoramic sequence (Inconsciences, Les rêves de la raison). The sequences highlight a patient game of permutations in which the artist creates a visual prose dominated by the principle of discontinuity. The ensemble constitutes the first exhibition of colour photographs by the artist.

Curator Jean Rochefort, a friend of the artist, supervised Birfurcations, mounted by the Comité de développement de la Fondation J. Armand Bombardier. The exhibition was further presented at the Centre d’exposition de l’Université de Montréal from March 2 to April 2, 2006 within the traveling exhibition program of the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas.

ARTIST RAYMONDE APRIL

Raymonde April was born in Moncton, New Brunswick in 1953 and grew up in Rivière-du-Loup in eastern Québec. She lives and works in Montréal, where she has taught photography at Concordia University since 1985. Her stark photography, which combines a documentary, autobiographical and fictional approach inspired by daily life, began garnering attention at the end of the 1970s. Frequently exhibited in Canada and elsewhere, her work has been shown in important solo exhibitions, including Voyage dans le monde des Choses at the Montréal Museum of Contemporary Art in 1986, Les Fleuves invisibles, mounted by the Musée d’art de Joliette in 1997 and presented in Canada and France until 2000, and Tout embrasser, presented at Concordia University’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery during Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal in 2001. Works by Raymonde April are part of major public collections in Canada and numerous private collections. She recently completed a residency at the New York studio of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

CURATOR JEAN-CLAUDE ROCHEFORT

Jean-Claude Rochefort was born in Saint-Hilarion-de-Charlevoix, Québec. He lives in Charlevoix and Montréal, where he works as an art critic and independent curator. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from UQAM in the study and practice of art. He has written numerous articles in Spirale, a magazine for which he spearheaded several files, including one on digital imagery and another, in collaboration with Catherine Mavrikakis, on love. Jean-Claude Rochefort also worked as an arts columnist for the Le Devoir newspaper from 2001 to 2004. He is currently working to establish the centre Art, Nature et Paysage in Saint-Hilarion-de-Charlevoix.

Press release excerpt

Photo : Raymonde April

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