Referencing Material

Referencing Material is a new body of photo-based work by Dennis Day that continues a 30-year exploration into what might best be described as re-imagining and re-arranging the “familiar”. Like many of his earlier photo and video works, in which pop-inflected explorations of figure-ground constructions were often colourfully and artificially staged, Day’s new photographs use naturalism largely as a point of departure.

On an immediate level, Referencing Material is a playful re-working of the still life genre; re-imagining everyday rituals, and more formally exploring the dichotomies of materiality/immateriality and representation/impersonation. Staged on a diorama light-table, the resulting photographs at first present a kind of “trompe l’oeil” but ultimately point to larger issues in image making.

Can a representation be a thing? Can material be a thing? By shifting the substance of known objects, Day’s new works point to artifice, fragile rituals and perhaps the temporality of both objects and representations.

While words are not employed directly, Day is going after “language” - often distorting figures or showing rough seams and edges – questioning not only the integrity of these figures, but perhaps the words that are meant to contain them.


Referencing Material is a Featured Exhibition of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.


Originally from Newfoundland, Dennis Day is a Toronto-based photographer and video artist and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, 1984.