Canadian
Vessel Group
silver gelatin print
on verso signed on the back of the work, titled and dated 1992 on the gallery label
41 x 41 1/2 in, 104.1 x 105.4 cm
Estimate: $4,000 - $6,000 CAD
Sold for: $5,313
Preview at: Vancouver Art Gallery, 4th Floor
PROVENANCE
Donated by the Artist
Courtesy of Republic Gallery, Vancouver
Carol Sawyer is an accomplished Vancouver-based visual artist and singer working predominately with photography, video, installation and improvised music. Since the early 1990s, her work has been concerned with the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory and history. Her ongoing project The Natalie Brettschneider Archive has been shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and at Carleton University Art Gallery. Sawyer was awarded the 2017 Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography by the Canada Council for the Arts.
In the early 1990s, Sawyer experimented with collage using fragments of film negatives. A result of an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, this work was first featured in Sawyer’s solo exhibition Vessels at the Or Gallery in 1993. For this photographic series, Sawyer photographed individually small found objects made from glass—perfume bottles, salt and pepper shakers, vials, vases and the like—against a black background. She then cut and collaged together the negatives to construct composite images of vessels in various groupings, leaving the lines of tape visible. Portrayed large-scale, these vessels take on an anthropomorphic quality—simultaneously referencing the human body while moving beyond fixed categories of gender.
This is a unique work.
Please note: Consignor Hammer Price proceeds of this lot will benefit the Vancouver Art Gallery.
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