Sunday, February 1, 2009

Surrey Gets Cultured

Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer renown for his photographs of landscapes altered by industry, will be giving an illustrated presentation at the Surrey Art Gallery on Thursday Feb 12th at 7pm. Unfortunately, the event is sold out, which may be why the "buy tickets" link on the gallery website has been broken since over a week ago when I tried to buy my ticket online. However, if last minute tickets are not possible, you can at least see his exhibit, "Edward Burtynsky: An Uneasy Beauty – Photographs of Western Canada," which runs until March 22nd. According to the Georgia Straight, Burtynsky donated all 37 photos from the exhibition to the Surrey Art Gallery. I find it somehow fitting that Burtynsky was the artist to make such a significant and generous donation. His images reveal the juxtaposition of beauty within hideousness, which seems an appropriate metaphor for Surrey's usually poor public image as the blight of the lower mainland.

The photo above is entitled "Iberia Quarries #3", which Burtynsky took in Portugal in 2006 and was featured on the cover of the July/August 2007 issue of The Walrus.

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