Taking Time

The keeping of time in modern life is standardized. Yet how do we experience and reflect on time in our daily lives? Exploring portraits of the everyday through moving image projections, Taking Time focuses on ideas of the commute, routine and activity, and small acts.

Four time-based artworks from Canadian and international artists Julie Andreyev, Josh Hite, Mark Lewis, Gabriela Vanga, and Mircea Cantor are shown in looping sequence. Tune into 89.9 FM on your MP3 player or car stereo when you are nearby to hear the artworks with soundtracks.Through different approaches to camera work, the artists represent ordinary, everyday movements in extraordinary ways.

Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside | Mark Lewis

Capturing pedestrians in Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside, London-based Mark Lewis turns the camera upside down, focusing on the elongated shadows of pedestrians moving through streets in London’s financial district. These shadows cast in the early morning and golden hour before sunset show everyday life in routine surroundings as beautifully cinematic.

Bikeride | Julie Andreyev

Vancouver-based Julie Andreyev’s video Bikeride is informed by her everyday activities with her dogs, Tom and Sugi, shot from a camera mounted at dog height on the artist’s bicycle. Pictured as central subjects in large scale, Tom and Sugi’s actions are detailed in relation to passing urban scenes on bike routes in Vancouver. This work is part of Andreyev’s Animal Lover series, an interspecies collaboration with her two companion dogs.

Repeats and Attempts | Josh Hite

Collectively shot by 23 skaters and riders with a GoPro camera, Vancouver-based Josh Hite’s project Repeats and Attempts unravels rhythms that emerge from seemingly perpetual endeavours, somewhere between hard work and serious play in the bowl and on the skateable features at Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre Youth Park. The projection of Repeats and Attempts on UrbanScreen acts as an embodied magnifying glass, alternating between repetition akin to gif animation and actual series of attempts by the skaters and riders.

The snow and the man | Gabriela Vanga and Mircea Cantor

Recordings from an apartment window in Paris detail the tentative gestures of a man in freshly falling snow that take the form of building a snowman in Romania/Paris-based Gabriela Vanga's and Mircea Cantor’s The snow and the man. Through the slow pace and the figure’s constant checking of his wristwatch, we are reminded that his impulsive task at hand is indeed unscheduled.

Curator: Alison Rajah
Origin of Exhibition: Surrey Art Gallery