Frac – an exhibition by Montreal artist Mitch Mitchell at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art

On , In News

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art welcomes Frac, a photo-based exhibition by Montreal artist Mitch Mitchell. Frac addresses the impacts of Canadian industrial process, specifically fracking and oil extraction, on the natural environment. In sequence, a series of Mitchell’s photos poetically depict a simple, winter-worn environment being corroded by mysterious disaster. Mitchell’s images range from large commercial banners to smaller picturesque landscapes, telling a story of land, industry, and a human thirst for energy. Many photos in Frac use the clichéd phenomenon of ‘heroic’ landscape documentary as a springboard for a nuanced and provocative narrative.
Visit the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art between June 6 and July 19 to view the exhibition. Please join us for an opening reception and artist talk on Friday, June 6 at 7pm.
All events take place at The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art and are free to the public.

His exhibition will be extending into public space with a guerilla advertising campaign. “Frac’ Your Yard” posters will be put up around Kelowna, glamourizing a fictitious company’s availability to put your property through the hydraulic land fracturing process: a process known as fracking that is currently causing controversy on Canada’s east coast.

Mitch Mitchell is an interdisciplinary print based artist living in Montreal, QC.  He originates from Chicago, Illinois. His multiple bodies of work explore the conditions of affect and effect on landscape as perpetuated by the human element of design, commerce and global commercial industry.  Mitchell has exhibited nationally and internationally in multiple solo and group exhibitions and has represented Canada in a number of print based Biennials around the world.  Multiple institutions such as the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Art Gallery of Alberta, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Douro in Portugal have collected his work.  Mitch is currently working on a new body of work set to open in the summer of 2016 at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia being curated by Sarah Fillmore, Head curator of the Sobey Art Award and Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art is an artist-run centre located in Kelowna at the Rotary Centre for the Arts, 421 Cawston Avenue. The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art is a registered non-profit charitable organization dedicated to the development of the creative community. Since 1989, the Alternator has shown the work of emerging Canadian artists, focused on innovative and non-traditional mediums engaged in social and cultural issues.

Attn Editors: For more information, images, or to schedule an interview with the artists please call Lorna McParland (Director) at 250-868-2298.