Gather: Balloons: This work is an archive of digitally scanned clusters of decaying balloons found on the beaches of Toronto Island. These tokens were witness to celebrations and social gatherings of families and friends. The images are symbols marking life's events that now remain as memory. What stays in the landscape are the sand-encrusted fragments of balloons, ribbons and other debris: the forgotten detritus of social occasions now reborn in the digital world. This work also references the ways in which botanical specimens and social artifacts are collected and documented. Gather is a contemporary take on the Victorian Cabinets of curiosities. Exhibited at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, on backlit screens along the shoreline during the Contact Photography Festival 2009. Chromogenic prints, 30" x 40" and 40" x 50", edition of five,  2009.  

Copyright 2020, April Hickox
Using Format