"For an artist, the studio is a foxhole, a bunker. It’s a place where things take shape. Where machinations become real, where the ineffable finds form."
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Joseph Hartman, Artist Studios, September 19 to October 17, 2015, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto9/13/2015 Visit Stephen Bulger Gallery website This image from the Return series is in the 20th anniversary exhibition Orange Shed, Collins, ON, 2010
See the post on canadianart.ca here
Joseph Hartman’s series of works entitled Return is a systematic exploration of the artist’s roots in the Northern Ontario Aboriginal settlements of Heron Bay (population 480) and Collins (population 60). His parents made their homes in both settlements in the years preceding and following his birth in 1978, and the Hartman family’s time in these communities quickly fell into familial lore. Over a period of three weeks in the late summer of 2010, Hartman returned to the area to both augment and interrogate his chimerical memories of the first years of his childhood. Here, we present two works from the series; The House We Lived In, Collins, Ontario is paired with Meadow and Freight Train, Collins, Ontario, showing both Hartman’s former home and the field behind it. In contrast to the sense of community the family remembers, Hartman’s photographs are empty of people and taken in a detached, documentary style that captures the distance he experiences from these formative memories. We are often admonished to “take only photographs and leave only footprints” in our travels; in Return, such impermanence seems inevitable. Joseph Hartman was born in Barrie and raised, largely, in Lafontaine, Ontario. He has had solo shows at the MacLaren Art Centre (Return, 2012), Georgian College Campus Gallery in Barrie and Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, which represents his work. His photographs are held in numerous private and public collections, as well as at the Art Gallery of Hamilton where he currently resides. Meadow and Freight Train, Collins, ON, 2010
The son of cityscape painter John Hartman was set to go to med school when he changed directions to become a photographer, apprenticing for several years with Edward Burtynsky and relocating to the Hammer from a small Georgian Bay town. His sharp, beautifully composed colour images of his adopted city show the influence of Burtynsky and his father, but his streetscapes with old cars and panoramas incorporating the defunct steelworks capture his own sense of gritty urbanity... Read more here
Joseph Hartman moved to The Hammer from small town Ontario in 2007, and became as fascinated by the city as a whole as I am by the sight of the fires roaring up from the factories (cliched, I know). Hartman's 4x5 view camera gets personal with the people and working-class neighbourhoods of Steeltown... see the full artice here
4 Hamilton by Joseph Hartman
Stephen Bulger Gallery offers this glimpse of life not too far from home. Joseph Hartman’s series of images for Hamilton were snapped over a seven-year period in the eponymous Ontario town, capturing factories, residential areas and landscapes... see the full article here Hamilton Spectator article by Amy Kenny Read the article here |
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