Moyra Davey: Ornament and Reproach

Moyra Davey is an acclaimed photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in New York. This exhibition presents notable projects that Davey has undertaken with John Goodwin since 1993. Through an understated approach to photography and video, as well as her insightful critical writing on photography, she considers the meanings carried in everyday objects. This exhibition provides an overview of her practice with early works including the multiple MoneyBox (1993), published by Shark Editions, New York; photographs from her Newsstand series (1993–94) and Bottle Grid series (1996–2000); and video works. For her 2001 exhibition at goodwater in Toronto, she began producing photographic mailers that carry the physical traces of their journeys through the mail system, a practice that has continued for subsequent exhibitions. She has mailed over one thousand photographs across the world.  A new set of mailers—twenty-seven folded photographs taken in Trinity Church Cemetery in upper Manhattan—are featured in the exhibition.

Satellite Gallery is a Michael O’Brian Family Foundation project with partners the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, and Presentation House Gallery.