Reception for the Artist: Saturday, May 6, 2-5pm
The Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present “Experimental Lake” our first solo exhibition of work by Canadian artist Guillaume Simoneau.
Canada’s reputation as a caring country suffered immensely when funding for scientific research, designed to benefit all nations, was cancelled under the last Conservative government. Guillaume Simoneau’s photographs are like signposts in the wilderness. They are not memorial in nature but sing nature’s praises alongside human handiwork.
A fugitive storyline is to be pieced together by us out of the folklore of the moment, wherein the artist and we, his viewers, find ourselves on the cusp and hungry for answers. This compendium of images is unhinged from the moorings of conventional narrative readings. They speak of travel, pilgrimage, epiphany and discovery with a simple, selfless stoicism. Time of day, experiments out on the water, and scientific equipment, all suggest an itinerary which is at once mysterious and immanent, pungent and rich.
Simoneau has stated about the project that “this body of work moves away from the omnipresent vanity found all around us these days and focus, at once, on the outside; on the idea of common good and necessary evil. The resulting work is presented not as a series about the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) but as a compendium of images produced on location at the ELA and therefore infused by its spirit and beauty”.
Image: Mobile, ELA field station, Canada, 2014 © Guillaume Simoneau / Courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery
