Lay Flat // A Conversation with Owen Kydd

Owen Kydd’s works are durational photographs made on video. Born in Calgary, Alberta in 1975,
Kydd moved to Vancouver, Canada where he graduated from Simon Fraser University with a
joint degree in Film and Fine Art. Over the past decade he has presented his work in numerous
group exhibitions, including 2009’s “Sentimental Journey” at the Contemporary Art Gallery,
Vancouver. Kydd currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. read interview

Posted by Lucas Blalock
January 3, 2012

How do artists picture the city?

A city offers both beauty and banality. It is repetitious and dynamic; it can appear to stay the same,
yet change drastically over a short period of time. Beyond Vague Terrain: The City and the Serial
Image shows many sides to cities, especially Metro Vancouver’s. The ambitious, and in many
cases large-scale, artworks include a grid of shimmering graphite rubbings of eroded date-
stamped sidewalks on Vancouver’s Westside, a 109 foot long light box presenting a panorama
of Metro Vancouver as seen from a moving SkyTrain, and an interactive photographic database
of every bus stop in Surrey. Through photography, painting, drawing, and video, artists have used
the strategy of multiple images to create compelling ways of representing experiences of the city.

The artists in the exhibition are Sylvia Grace Borda, Michael de Courcy, Chris Gergley, Jeremy
Herndl, Bill Jeffries, Roy Kiyooka, Owen Kydd, Khan Lee, Helma Sawatzky, Susan Schuppli,
Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, and Neil Wedman.

Sentimental Journey

Mike McLean & Laura Trunkey, Owen Kydd, Michael Drebert, Kevin Schmidt,

Kara Uzelman, Gareth Moore

Sentimental Journey continues our interest in contemporary representations of the landscape.
For this group exhibition we will bring together six local artists who focus on romantic notions
of nature, highlighting the journey as an essential aspect in the way the landscape has been
historically represented and constructed.

June 19 – August 16 2009

CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY

555 Nelson St.

Vancouver, BC

V6B 6R5

Phone: 604.681.2700

www.contemporaryartgallery.ca