AMY FRIEND

Amy Friend (*1974, CA) creates multi-layered photographs that transport viewers into an emotional dream world. She devotes herself with great intensity not only to such issues as identity and the past but to the medium of photography as such. A sense of nostalgia runs like a leitmotif through her work, based, for instance, on family pictures or vintage photographs. She informs the enigmatic images of her insightful series, “Dare alla Luce”, with a new radiance by adding a scattering of small, dancing dots of light to the memories they convey. Luminous and silent at once.

Her experience of a hot summer day marks the series “Timekeeper” – time seemed to have been arrested as in a dream because of the intense heat and the beach became an enraptured, almost unreal place. Amy Friend, originally a painter, fractured the perfect scenes with white paint, heightening them by leaving a record of her emotions on that day. She thus extends the medium of photography, whose full potential has been achieved only after she has worked the surface of the pictures.

In Friend’s latest series, “Salt Soaked Sea”, water has become a crucial feature of her artistic inquiry. The ocean is incorporated into memories of times past. Her prints, dipped into seawater, show a surprising and particularly weighty materiality:  Friend leaves them to dry for several weeks until all of the water has evaporated, leaving behind a surface covered with crystalline traces of salt.

Exhibitions: (Selection)

Upcoming:

• Assorted Boxes of Ordinary Life, Thames Art Gallery, solo-exhibition, Chatham, (US)

• Title TBA, Museum London, London, (UK), (June 2023)

2021

• Ocean, Bildhalle, Group Exhibition, Zurich, (CH)

• Keeper of the Hearth, Houston Centre for Photography, Houston, (US)

2020

• Altered Image, Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami Design District, Miami, (US)

• Wild Things, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY, (US)

• Finding Love, Center of Photography Mart, Yekaterinburg, (RUS)

• Viewing Room – Contemporary Women, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, (US)

2019

• Taylor Wessing Portrait Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London,(UK)

• Foreign Photographers Invitational Exhibition, Busan Photography Festival, Busan, South Korea

• Supernatural, (projections) Fotofestiwal Lodz, (POL)

• Standpoint, Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art, (UKR)

• Standpoint, Kiev Photo Festival, Lavra Gallery Kiev, (UKR)

• Paris Photo, InCamera Galerie, solo-exhibition, Paris, (FR)

• Beyond Boundaries, Aperture Gallery, New York, (US)

• Unnecessary Exhibition in Life, Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea

2018

• Co/Action, 500x Gallery, Dallas, Texas, (US)

• Indian Photography Festival, Hyderbad, (IND)

• Paris Photo, InCamera Galerie, Einzelausstellung, Paris, (FR)

• Elles X Paris Photo, sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture, Paris (FR)

• Stardust, Civic Museum of Pallazzo de Penna, solo-exhibition, Perugia, (IT)

2017

• Récits Photographique, Abbey De Silvacane, La Roque D’Athéron, solo-exhibition, Provence, France (FR)

2016

• Eternal Light, Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre Gallery, Einzelausstellung, Toronto, (US)

• Denbora/Time, GETXOPhoto Festival, solo-exhibition, Bilboa, (ES)

• Assorted Boxes of Ordinary Life, Rodman Hall, solo-exhibition, St. Catharines, (US)

• Dare alla Luce, Pictura Gallery, solo-exhibition, Bloomington, IN, (US)

Grants, Awards, Residences:

• Canada Council for the Arts, Explore and Create: Research and Creation, 2018

• Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Abroad Grant, 2008, 2017

• Regan Peacock-Fung Memorial Art Fund, 2015

• Clarke Thompson Award for Excellence in Sessional Teaching, 2015

• Ontario Arts Council, Emerging Artist Grant, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016 • Ontario Arts Council, Exhibition Assistance Grant, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

• Windsor Endowment for the Arts, Emerging Artist Grant, Visual Arts, 2012 • Banff Artist in Residence - Banff, Alberta, 2011

Collections:

• Onassis Center, Athens, (GR)

• City of St. Catharines

• Candela Collection, (US)

• York University, Toronto, (US)

• Sir Elton John Photography Collection

• Private Collections

Publications:

• 2020, Wild Things: Disrupting the Photographic Archive in the Time of the Pandemic (Catalogue), CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, (US)

• 2019, Photography and Culture: Volume 12. No. 4. Cover Art, Routledge, (UK)

• 2018, Coccioli, Emma. “Animae. The invisible sources of the artwork: talks with today’s artists”, Vernon Press, (ES)