Dagmara Genda: Beating the Bush

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Artist Talk: Saturday, September 5, 1:00 pm, reception to follow

While on residency in London UK, Polish-Canadian artist Dagmara Genda took hundreds of photographs of one common laurel hedge, situated in Regent's Park, which had, as is popular custom, been perfectly sculpted and sheared into a rectangular forms. The laurel was photographed under various natural and artificial lighting conditions, allowing Genda to produce a wide palette of green shades.  Abstracting the leaf forms through photography and photo manipulation, she also arrived with huge vocabulary of Impressionistic brushstrokes as well. These images have been cut up and assembled into collages that reference Constructivist and Suprematist works of the early-to-mid twentieth century.  Her project references the utopian and political aspirations of the Constructivists to articulate the utopian and political dimensions of the garden – specifically the English garden - as attempts to civilize and control nature.

Dagmara Genda has a BFA Honours from the University of Manitoba, an MFA from the University of Western Ontario, and Masters of Research in Cultural Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Canada Council International Residency in London, Project Grants, Saskatchewan Arts Board Creative Grants, amongst others. She has attended residencies in Banff, China, London, UK, Paris, Brooklyn, and Toronto, and has exhibited internationally. Genda is also a writer and curator.

Dagmara Genda, Beating the Bush (Installation View), 2015. Photo by Don Hall.