CHERYL PAGUREK

4th & Seymour

Cheryl Pagurek is a photo-based and video artist living in Ottawa, Ontario. She received an MFA from the University of Victoria (1992). Since then her work has been shown extensively in galleries across Canada from Victoria to St. John’s, as well as in a commissioned project for Prefix Photo magazine (2004).  Exhibitions and screenings of note include those in Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, Montréal, Chicago, Toulouse, Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles. Her video and light box installation Reflection and Flowwas shown in 2009 in Montréal as part of Le Mois de la Photo, and in 2010 at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in Halifax. In 2010 she also exhibited the video Growing Pains and photographic series High Value Targets at Patrick Mikhail Gallery in Ottawa. She was awarded a Public Art Commission by the City of Ottawa Public Art Program to create Currents, her LED video display for the Market Place Transit Station that was installed in May 2011. In 2012, in addition to participating in Ottawa’s inaugural Nuit Blanche with Flashcards, a collaborative video installation, she also completed several new bodies of work in photography and video.

These were launched at Patrick Mikhail Gallery in January 2013 in a solo exhibit entitled State of Flux. Her work is in several collections including Foreign Affairs Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Library of the National Gallery of Canada, Cenovus Energy Inc., the Ottawa Art Gallery and the City of Ottawa, and has been written about in Canadian, American and British publications, including Ciel Variable, BlackFlash, Vie des Arts, Canadian Art online, Next Level (UK), and Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. She has received grants from the City of Ottawa, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, and is represented by Patrick Mikhail Gallery. Her videos are distributed by Groupe Intervention Vidéo and Vtape.

Bodies of Water combines the fluidity of life drawing with video footage of urban reflections in water. It intertwines narratives of human journeys with those of travelling waters in a vivid expression of colour, energy, and motion. Animated figures of rippling water portray an ongoing flow of humanity, a testament to both constant change and continued endurance. A wide range of emotion is conveyed by the fluctuating character of the water, and through the posture and movements of the individuals.

Cheryl Pagurek
Bodies of Water, 2013
HD Video, 6 minutes 50 seconds

Photos: Devon Lindsay, 2014