Photography by Paul Gravett, Michael Cox, Francine Drouin and Freda Pagani

Opening Reception: cancelled on February 4 due to snow. The opening reception for this exhibition will take place Saturday, February 8, 2–4 p.m. as part of the Meet the Artist Special Event that was already scheduled.

Meet the Artists Special Event: Saturday, February 8, 2–4 p.m.

The Ferry Building Gallery is pleased to present Ways of Seeing, a photo-based exhibition that showcases artwork by Michael Cox, Francine Drouin, Paul Gravett and Freda Pagani.

Michael Cox thinks of photographs as an attempt to make sense of what we see, simultaneously containing and excluding, framing the rich sensorial experience of a place and time. In his photographs, Cox wants as much as possible—given the intervention of lens, sensor, data compression and image editing—to illustrate how, in these specific moments, something caused him to bring camera to eye and press the shutter.

Francine Drouin explores the use of photography as a means to create rather than to document. She attempts to fuse reality with the imagined. Digital intervention plays an important role in arriving at the final print, allowing her to enhance, mold and transform the image. In The Fair series, she has made use of these techniques to create a sense of suspense, distance, beauty and mystery.

With a background in professional musical performance followed by floor loom and tapestry weaving, Paul Gravett explores the intersections of photography and contemporary art. Light and colour become the subject matter to reveal rich palettes and patterns and layered rhythms and textures. Using different techniques, his process starts in the camera, as he looks beyond the object to explore unseen elements and abstractions of the visceral world.

An architect by training and an environmentalist at heart, Freda Pagani is fascinated by pattern in nature and society. Her art explores the relationship between the two. The works in this show are on the theme of ‘passage.’ Each piece depicts a physical or metaphorical transition: time, life stages, physical place or a state of being. The images in this show represent a significant aspect of her life and she strives to convey the feeling associated with that particular transition from one state to another.