Name/Title
Snowblob #1Entry/Object ID
2009.03.01Description
Gwen MacGregor (b. 1960, Calgary, Alberta) is a Toronto-based visual artist and cultural geographer working in installation, video, photography and drawing. Her art focuses on the importance of time and place and captures the drama and fleetingness of small impromptu moments and uncanny, familiar situations.
MacGregor is a seasoned observer. Her sense of vision is actively in pursuit of events that are exquisite, unique, and go wholly unnoticed. Suspended above the ground like beehives, her Snowblob series photographs masses of snow caught in the branches of trees as a result of extreme weather and changes in temperature. The conditions required for their formation are precise and infrequent. There is also a sense of tragedy as the specific circumstances that allow them to be seen are the same circumstances that cause them to melt. As the forest greens up, the remarkable phenomenon occurs leaving white markings in the environment. The photos preserve a moment of strange beauty as the blobs disappear that would otherwise be an unnoticed series of brief encounters by the artist.
MacGregor has received awards such as the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist of the Year and the Canada Council International Studio in New York. Her works can be found in several collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Oakville Galleries, Artbank, and the Royal Bank Collection. MacGregor has an Honours BA from York University, a Masters in Cultural Geography from The University of Toronto and is continuing to pursue a Ph.D. in Cultural Geography as a recipient of an SSHRC doctoral CGS scholarship. Her dissertation explores the constructions and contestations of nationhood in contemporary art practices presented at art biennales.
http://www.gwenmacgregor.com/artist.htmlMade/Created
Date made
2009Edition
ed. 3