Sight Unseen: Aaron John Bourque & Allison Cekala

Exhibition: January 6 – 29, 2017
Reception: Friday, Jan 6th (5:30 to 8:30pm)
Artists Talk: Thursday, Jan 12th (6:00pm)

VCP will be open 7 days a week from Noon to 5pm between Jan 6th and 29th!

The photographic works of Boston artists Aaron John Bourque and Allison Cekala are linked by a desire to uncover and deconstruct landscape. Bourque and Cekala both use their photographs to bring attention to stories that lay just below the surface within the urban facade. Bourque’s photographs of marginalized and transitional spaces within the Fort Hill neighborhood point towards a neighborhood’s turbulent past and resilient community. Cekala’s photographs of salt piles, paired with a video installation, tell the story of Boston’s road salt, as it travels 4500 miles from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to every inch of Boston’s streets.

The photographs of both artists contain more than the eye can see, documenting evidence of larger stories impacting both the natural and social landscapes, encouraging a deeper look into what our surroundings can tell us, while seeking to make visible what otherwise might remain unseen.

Aaron John Bourque is an Artist, Photographer, Educator, and Historian. By visiting document archives and reading the landscape for the evidence of our histories, Bourque creates lyric documents that a find tension between the descriptive qualities of the photographic object, and the experience of an encounter with the world. Bourque’s large format landscapes search for connection to the places we dwell and the histories we leave behind. Bourque’s work is a meditation on both America’s amnesiac relationship with it’s history, and a call to know the places we call home. As an educator, Bourque is the founding manager of the Center for Arts and Graphic Equipment at Mount Ida College. Bourque also recently received a teaching fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, has acted as a guest lecturer, and has delivered numerous lectures and artist talks. Bourque holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, a Post-baccalaureate Certificate in Studio Art, and a Master’s of Fine Art. Though originally from New Hampshire Bourque now lives in Roslindale, MA (a neighborhood of Boston).

Allison Cekala is a Boston-based visual artist and educator primarily working in photography and film. Her work investigates the ways in which humans move, shape, and transform the their surroundings. Cekala holds a BA from Bard College in Photography and Environmental Studies and an MFA from Tufts University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Museum of Science, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the American Film Institute, and reviewed in the Boston Globe, WBUR’s Artery, and NPR’s The World, among others. She was the Marion O. Naumberg fellow in Photography at the MacDowell Colony in 2015 and her film, Fundir, won best short documentary film at the Lisbon International Film Festival in 2016. Her work has been supported the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Blanche E. Colman Foundation, the Montague Travel Grant, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. She will be an artist fellow at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in spring of 2017.

Selections from the Exhibition:

Aaron John Bourque

Allison Cekala

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