Being. Neither here nor there.

Grahame Lynch

July 2 - August 27, 2022

Reception July 29, 2022 during ARTcrawl

The works in this exhibition represent gaps in time that are chaotic, fragmented and isolating. Images have been shot on trains, subways, buses and in airports — spaces that are perpetually transitory. To be in these places means being between a point of departure and a destination; they are places where restlessness and a desire to be elsewhere are palpable.  

Thousands of photographs were shot over three years, and then during the pandemic, the process of gathering stopped abruptly. What emerged in its place was a practice of discovering resonant moments within the raw data. Intersections and crowds took on new significance, as did the situations where people are distanced from each other or dissolving into their environments. As the images coalesced in frenetic compositions of shifting locations and people enacting their own transience, themes of immediacy, delay and agitation emerged along with a deafening silence that weighs heavily on the participants in that space.

The photographic processes exploit technological glitches that occur as a result of speed and motion, and the work has been subjected to digital, mechanical and chemical interventions. The resulting images depart from photographic traditions that have a single frame of reference, often appearing spatially compressed and optically imprecise.

Grahame Lynch is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is entrenched in conditions of visual disability. Through images and installations, he explores and shares different ways of seeing. In his current body of photographic work, both time and place appear fragmented and compressed into frenetic compositions that suggest narratives about immediacy, delay and agitation. Grahame has an MFA from the University of Guelph and is an Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.