ELYSE LONGAIR - EXPOSURE emerging photographers showcase

My artistic praxis references and engages with simple images, using collage and collage aesthetics. The simple images encourage us to rethink and reflect on the role of imagination, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures. In my current series of collage-based work, I aim to explore how fragmented worlds of a reconstructed past may question our notions of time and reshape our thinking of the future.

Each collage begins analogue, by hand, which requires a lot of time spent studying what images are and searching for possible relationships to re-imagine beyond the realities and meanings of the ‘original.’ I scan my collages to eliminate the cut lines and reduce the colour and texture variances. I find limiting the source material also pushes the viewer to negotiate between the obvious images and those that are more subtle. I welcome the evidence of reproduction, seen in the CMYK dots – cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.  When you look closely, you will see the dots are different sizes based on the scaling of the ‘original,’ which hints at the individual fragment collaged. Even though I am reimagining each image, they always bring a trace, a relationship to the context of the world from which they were taken from. To me, that’s a beautiful thing.  

BIOGRAPHY

Elyse Longair is an Albertan artist, curator and image theorist, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. In 2021, Longair received her MFA from the Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design program at OCAD University. From 2020-2021, she was an RBC Emerging Artist at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Longair’s ‘simple image’ theory in collage re-imagines the role of images away from the overt-complexity that dominates our world, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures.