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Hazel Eckert | Picture Catalogue

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Opening reception: Saturday June 18 7-10 pm

June 18 – July 6

Picture Catalogue is an ongoing series of collage works that explore modes of intuition, chance encounter and tension in the collage process. Images from archival and current magazine spreads are removed from their original context and are recombined along the seam of my sketchbook into enigmatic fragments of individual narratives. In an attempt to skirt the nostalgia inherent in the source imagery I carefully choose graphic elements for their abstract properties instead of their overt cultural references.

After an initial period of collecting and documenting, I arrive at final a composition through a process of selecting, cutting, and joining images. For a year I have been collecting images from old and new Pop Culture, Fashion and News magazines as well as pillaging the Toronto Reference Library’s Picture Collection, an archive housing over a million images clipped from magazines, discontinued books, and printed photographs.

The seam or gutter of my sketchbook acts as an axis on which I can adapt and manipulate new points of intersection for the images. Each collage is reproduced as a print on a folded sheet of paper, preserving the materials’ original alignment along the seam of a commercial publication.

Hazel Eckert is an artist, printer and designer from Toronto Ontario. She holds a B.A in printmaking from OCAD University, 2008. With a background in graphic design and letterpress printing, commercial materials and techniques inform her art practice. As a recipient of numerous awards and grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, Open Studio and Atelier Graff, Eckert’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across Canada. She has participated in artist residencies in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. Eckert lives and works in St. John’s, NL.