Corporate Wasteland

The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization

A Touring Exhibition of contemporary photography and plant shutdown stories planned for November 2006 to December 2008. Accompanied with the publication of a book.

The WKP Kennedy Public Art Gallery is organizing a touring exhibition that focuses on abandoned North American industrial landscapes and memories of job loss. Artist/Curator David W. Lewis is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Cuba, Europe and Asia. Steven High, historian/curator, is an award winning oral historian and published author at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec. He has been recording the stories of displaced industrial workers for over ten years. Dermot Wilson, Director/Curator at the WKP Kennedy Gallery, is working on media components for the exhibition and will help organize the international tour.

The exhibition will consist of 60 photographs taken in the past four years, arranged into five photo-essays that explore the landscape and memory of deindustrialization in Ontario, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. David’s use of infra-red film and the bromoil and transfer processes sets his photographs apart.

Corporate Wasteland will also incorporate the plant shutdown stories told by American and Canadian workers in text panels and multi-media (audio). Together, the images and voices communicate the hardship and hurt as well as the resilience of industrial workers in towns and cities on either side of the Canada-United States border.

Corporate Wasteland:

The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization

BOOKING DETAILS

60 photographs and 10 text panels requiring approximately 175 feet of running wall space.
Professional gallery controls and security are required.
A BOOK will be published containing an introductory essay, the photographic images, as well as selected plant shutdown stories.
A bilingual dissemination sheet will accompany the exhibition to provide a free educational guide to the artist’s images and content.
Rental Fee: $1,600. and one-way shipping. Each recipient venue will be responsible for insurance while the work is in their care.
Fee includes ten BOOKS and 100 dissemination sheets.

TOURING SCHEDULE

(to date)

WKP KENNEDY GALLERY, North Bay , Ontario

January 13 to February 10, 2007

SHERMAN HINES GALLERY , Liverpool , Nova Scotia

June/July 2007

KALAMAZOO INSTITUTE OF ARTS , Kalamazoo , Michigan

Additional venue dates will be considered into 2006.

CONTACT

Steven High, Oral Historian/Curator

Department of History,

C O N C O R I A U N I V E R S I T Y

1455 de Maisonneuve Boulevard West , Montreal , Quebec H3G 1M8

E-Mail: shigh@alcor.concordia.ca Telephone: (514) 488-2591