Annie MacDonell is a visual artist working across mediums. Her practice begins from the photographic impulse to frame and capture, but her output extends beyond photography. In recent years her work has included films, installations, sculpture, performance and writing. Her work questions the constitution, function, and circulation of images in the 21st century.

She received a BFA from Ryerson University in 2000, followed by graduate studies at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, in France. Recent performances have been presented at Nuit Blanche Toronto, le Centre Pompidou and the Toronto International Film Festival. Recent solo shows have been held at the AGO, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mulherin New York, and Mercer Union Gallery. She has participated in group exhibitions at la Bibliothèque National in Paris, The Power Plant, MOCA Cleveland, and the Daegu Photo Biennale. In 2012 she was short-listed for the AGO AMIA prize for photography, and she has been long listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2012, 2015 and 2016. She is a founding member of Emilia Amalia, a feminist research and writing group. In the spring of 2018, she’ll be exhibiting new work at Gallery 44 as part of the Images Festival. She teaches at Ryerson University and lives in Toronto with her family.

Source: anniemacdonell.ca

This conceptual landscape by Annie MacDonell references the 1967 book, To Everything There is a Season, Roloff Beny in Canada. Beny, a world travelling artist/socialite obsessed with natural beauty, sought to mythologize the Canadian landscape in a year that marked the country’s centennial anniversary of confederation. MacDonell’s interventions fracture and reconstruct Beny’s mystical photographs, giving the soft, poetic imagery threatening edges that redress parallel social histories that existed (and still exist) in our society. Deceptively straightforward, these prints of reconfigured photographs layer our contemporary concerns on top of the perspectives and sensibilities of past eras.

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