"
I was drawn to Alex Homanchuk's work for the final wall in Roundabout, because
it conspires to leave us at the site of the exhibition itself - by the waterfront
of a city that seems to be feeling a sense of unease, perhaps even a creeping
dis-ease. Alex, a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design,
plays with the highly-charged event of the demolition of a short segment of
one of our icons of post-war North .American modernism - the Gardiner Expressway.
Clearly, Alex and I share an interest in the utopian emblems of our city.
However, I was also aware that our own differences might mean that we do not
necessarily frame our urbanist views for the same reasons. For example, Alex
speaks of his work in terms of metaphors of departure and journey while I
see my own images as offering points of arrival. Alex's work presents the
city still glittering seductively in the night (even if through its own ruins)
while I like to view it in the cold light of day. His work is surreptitious,
successful precisely because of the necessary invisibility of its author while
mine situates the act of photography as a kind of public performance. Meanwhile,
the city notes the escalating attention of which our photographs are a small
part and feigns indifference for a little while longer."
