ALEX THOMPSON - EXPOSURE EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOWCASE

Circling in a holding pattern of rejected proposals and changing developers, a pit has sat yawning at the corner of 87 Avenue and 118 Street NW in Edmonton since I arrived in the city two years ago. The suite of copperplate photogravures accompanying my submission depicts the slow passage of time over those two years, as entrance ramps erode, plants spring up from the standing water on the floor of the excavation before dying back in the winter, and as welds give out. This body of work captures the simultaneous growth and decay embodied in architectural projects, rendering visible both possibilities and opportunity costs. The images frame the interior of the site, isolated from the rest of the city, while indirectly alluding to its part in processes set in motion by its surrounding community, the city at large, and developers and entrepreneurs aspiring to develop it. The works highlight the melancholic nature of limbo and indecision, and the ongoing attrition that our architectural environments are subjected to in the process of their use and disuse. Every few weeks I return, to see little in the way of tangible change, and capture instead the shifting of the light, the settling of grains of sand, and the slow combustion of rust. Activity has resumed at the site as of mid-August, with a permit approved to erect a crane at the site.

BIOGRAPHY

Alex R.M. Thompson’s body of print- and installation-based work interrogates the structures of power and processes of land use that shape the contemporary world we occupy. His prints are monochromatic fabrications, using monumental, institutional, and infrastructural architecture to create hypothetical cityscapes from existing buildings. Through the process of combining disparate places, he illustrates spaces that are simultaneously plausible, familiar, and forlorn. Recognizable structures emerge outside of their contexts, looming above empty streets that do not exist. The inter-reliant nature of urban areas and the compression of distance as technology connects cities underpin Thompson’s methods of creative generation, leading to reflections on architecture embracing its timeliness/timelessness. He has exhibited at galleries in Canada and abroad, including The Power Plant (Toronto), The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), and the Gladstone Hotel (Toronto), and has instructed various print techniques at Open Studio (Toronto), OCAD University (Toronto), and the University of Alberta (Edmonton). He is currently working towards his MFA at the University of Alberta.