APR 27, 2012 – MAY 19, 2012
Common Sense is pleased to present Back Alleys and Side Streets – Finding Beauty in the Overlooked Urban Environment, a new solo exhibition by Russell Bingham, showcasing his alternate photographic views of Edmonton’s local landscape.
“I suspect that most viewers will be struck by the ordinariness of my subject matter, the everyday banality of these views. Part of my motivation in taking these pictures is to reveal the power of photography to isolate and transform everyday visual experience. I know that for me, the act of making these images day after day has honed my awareness of and delight in the beauty of the banal.”
– Russell Bingham
Bingham worked as a curator of contemporary art with the Edmonton Art Gallery for 15 years, then moved on in the 1990s to free-lance work as an art consultant, curator, and writer, coordinating the art projects for both Edmonton’s new City Hall and the Winspear Centre. Since 1995 Bingham has been the Art, Music and Communications editor for the Canadian Encyclopedia, and the Encyclopedia of Music in Canda. Bingham has been exhibiting his own artwork over the last decade.
“For the last five or more years, I’ve been taking photographs of Edmonton’s residential and industrial environment, mostly wandering down back alleys, but occasionally photographing front views of homes and small industrial buildings…. Homeowners will take great pains to present the front views of their homes – and by extension, their lives – as orderly and prosperous. Sometimes, ostentatiously so. Their backyards will often tell a different story, one to do with recreational obsessions, unfinished projects, garden dreams and automotive abandonment. Industrial rear views are less personal, but no less revealing – telling stories of commercial growth and the cycle of boom and bust.”
-Russell Bingham
Common Sense 