9 x 12 inch accordion-fold book, 30 double-sided archival prints, bound in a flocked clamshell box
Edition of 6 (1 available)
$700
 
Artist Statement: 
 
Shannon Garden-Smith's book work Upright is fine, but downright is where I am continues her ongoing project documenting shoe treads printed in sidewalk concrete and road paint. Bound in a flocked clamshell box, the book is structured as an accordion fold-out that holds 30 double-sided prints, or 60 unique images. For each image that is immediately visible within the book, a second image remains latent on its reverse. However—tucked into slits on each accordion-fold page—the double sided prints are designed to be removed from the book structure, inviting countless re-arrangements. 
 
Imaging traces of touch that result from movement through the city, Garden-Smith’s photo series refocuses the way we look at the cities’ most pedestrian concrete surfaces, which are composed primarily of sand. The project lingers on sand—a material we connect deeply with time and the infinite—just as we find ourselves inconceivably but demonstrably on the brink of exhausting this resource.
 
Biography:
 
Shannon Garden-Smith (she/her) is an artist living and working between Tkaronto/Toronto and Stratford, Canada. She completed an MFA at the University of Guelph (‘17) and a BA at the University of Toronto (‘12). Working primarily in sculpture and installation, Garden-Smith’s recent projects focus on the surfaces within and on which contemporary life unfolds, training a sensitivity to the ground beneath us. Through a slow, repetitive process that re-visibilizes how the day-to-day architectures of our lives become invisibilized/naturalized through repeated exposure, Garden-Smith practices in an exuberant material poetics of lack and excess. 
 
Garden-Smith has recently shown work with the plumb (Toronto), Christie Contemporary (Toronto), Pumice Raft (Toronto), Modern Fuel (Kingston ON), TIER: The Institute for Endotic Research (Berlin), YYZ Artists’ Outlet (Toronto), Birch Contemporary (Toronto), Erin Stump Projects (Toronto), and 8-11 Gallery (Toronto). She and artist Amanda Boulos will present a project at The Bows (Mohkinstsis/Calgary AB) in the upcoming year.