Raised in Toronto and based in Glasgow, artist Corin Sworn presents here her first solo exhibition in an Ontario museum, bringing together two works that focus on perception, chance, and the unstable, transformative nature of the visual and material world.
Several years ago, the artist found a collection of abandoned slides by chance in an alleyway near her home. Sworn has created a spoken narrative to accompany these images, composed of found texts, poetic excerpts, and her own thoughts on what the images might mean and why they were taken. While it suggests the conventional art history lecture format, her audio text is speculative and open-ended. A play of light and shadows, the installation serves to remind us of the subjective nature of interpretation and the way we inevitably project meaning when we attempt to make sense of the world around us.
Also included in the exhibition are a series of silk panels that have been hand-coloured with plant dyes, botanical specimens used for dying textiles, and digitally manipulated photographs of plants. Contrasting precise methods of production with processes that are investigative and uncertain, the work draws on the idea that matter is “vibrant"—not static or set apart from us, but contingent, dynamic, and alive.
Corin Sworn is organized by Oakville Galleries and presented in partnership with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
