Size Matters: Steve Driscoll and Finn O’Hara

Size Matters: Steve Driscoll and Finn O’Hara

Size Matters:
Steve Driscoll and Finn O’Hara
Opens March 11, 2017
Curator: Sarah Stanners

A Primary Exhibition organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection for Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Size Matters brings together the work of painter Steve Driscoll and photographer Finn O’Hara for their first-ever exhibition at a public art gallery.

These Toronto-based artists face a dichotomy familiar to many Millennials: urban lifestyles combined with a love for the outdoors. Their work is a creative response to the need for a sense of scale. The resulting images are moments of intervention on landscapes that are sharply foreign to the production and even subject matter of the paintings themselves. A wooded portage route joins passersby on Queen Street West; a giant northern lights landscape finds itself fireside in the concrete jungle; and a multi-panelled waterfall is juxtaposed with towers of commerce in Edmonton.

The process of photographing art is laid bare, but any sense of practicality is abandoned for wit, and Guerrilla-style set making produces a document of art documentation. The disconnect between seemingly impromptu outdoor sets and the landscape paintings they act to frame underlines the impasse reached between en plein air methods and Canadian landscape painting in the 21st century.

Steve Driscoll (born 1980), Portage 2014, Urethane on plastic panel, 198.1 × 198.1 cm (78 × 78 in.), Collection of Brian Whibbs and Doris Stamml
Finn O’Hara (born 1972) & Steve Driscoll (born 1980), I Saw All this Continue On 2014, Digital Chromogenic Print, 45” x 60″