Stephen Andrews

P.O.V.

October 14 - November 12, 2005
Reception Friday October 14, 7-10pm

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Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present a body of new work by Toronto-based artist Stephen Andrews and a video animation produced in collaboration with John Greyson.

"The source material for these images is arrived at through free- associated wordplay and the Google search engine. Colours have been punched up and parts of source images have been sampled so that the relationship to the original is at best tenuous. These recent drawings have been spun out of the daily news. They are retooled versions of current events.

"In the wake of the recent London bombings I was again astounded by the telling, retelling and then amending of the story of the killing of a Brazilian man. What seems exceptional in this case was the short time- frame in which these different versions emerged. Usually a story goes cold before all the facts leak out. In this case we still had the different versions in mind. Consequently, who was being served by which version was plain to see. This became the inspiration for the collaboration with John Greyson. We have produced an animation using the same set of images shuffled and reshuffled to tell several different stories.

"The POV of the title refers to a subject's voice. In the press it is an opinion or an editorial and in cinematic terms it is a shot from the perspective of the viewer. In the selecting of these images I am struck by our position in relation to the subject. Here we seem to be at some remove from the action. We are bearing witness but with the luxury of being at a safe distance. Rather than imagining what the 'big picture' might be I have assembled a series of small pictures so that we might get the picture. Or, at least a version of it."

- Stephen Andrews
October 5, 2005

Stephen Andrews was born in 1956 in Sarnia, Ontario. His work deals with memory, identity, the body and the body politic. He has exhibited his work in Canada, the U.S., Brazil, Scotland, France, India and Japan. He is represented in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, as well as many other public and private collections.