Light work integrated into the Écart façade
by brittle longings was born in an apartment window, in the strange transformation of daily mourning. Accustomed to exploring different dimensions of human relationships and the connection between individuals, this time the artist adopts a posture rooted in solitude and recollection with oneself, through the experiences and feelings surrounding the loss of a loved one.
For this series of photos evoking the contrasts between presence and absence, emptiness and fullness, grief and celebration, Brookbank uses seemingly banal objects, but charged, by their arrangement and the setting in which they are placed, with a soothing poetry. Glass flutes, potatoes, flowers, adhesive tape, shoes and dry-erase markers stand side by side in a space of desire and ephemerality. Each image shows objects floating in a gentle surrealism, frozen in the frame, in the window, without being anchored to it. From this precarious but real equilibrium emerges a contemplative appeasement, at the juncture of melancholy and serenity.
B. Brookbank is a photographic artist who grew up on Canada’s east coast, currently working between Nova Scotia and Montreal. He holds an MFA in photography from Concordia University and a BFA in photography from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her practice has been supported by various grants and awards such as the Concordia Faculty of Fine Arts Fellowship, the Roloff Beny Photography Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Centre Clark in Montreal, the Eyelevel Gallery, the Anna in Halifax, the CCA in Glasgow, UK, among others. Iel will be in residence at Est Nord Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, in winter 2024.
