Still Broken Life

“Throughout my video practice I’ve often felt that my underlying approach is essentially to take my subject apart and then put it back together. I do this precisely because the strategy is never precise, revealing seams and edges and generally calling into question the whole “construct” of the subject matter itself.


Dennis Day’s new series of photos, Still Broken Life, flows from this position. Taking the tableau or still life as his subject matter, Day dismantles and reconfigures foregrounds and backgrounds, and varies his technique to arrive at a meticulously constructed and painterly outcome.The end result is an array of images that – while still - shift and reverberate back and forth among a number of visual continuums: painting-photography, object-fragment and stasis-movement.

While this is Day’s first major exhibition of photography, this aspect of his practice evolves out of an extensive body of video production, dating back to 1984, that investigates and re-works visual and linguistic narratives. It also marks a comprehensive return to a medium that he began exploring earlier on in his career.


Dennis Day was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland in 1960. He studied classical music and psychology before graduating in media-based art from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto (1984).

He has produced numerous video works known for their strong use of editing, rich colours and humour. He has won a number of prizes including the CALQ award in Quebec (2002), the Bulloch Award for Best Canadian Film at the Inside/Out Festival in Toronto (1997), and the VideoFest Award in Berlin, Germany (1995). He was nominated for the Bell Canada Award in Video Art (2009). He has participated in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Canada. Television broadcasts include: PBS (USA), TV Ontario, CBC, Vision TV (Canada), NHK (Japan) and Canal Plus (France).