A sparse gallery space with white walls and a concrete floor. A large black-and-white photograph of a seated figure reading is displayed on one wall. In the center, a minimalist lamp on a tripod stand provides soft illumination. A second smaller photograph is mounted on another wall, showing a close-up of a person reading. The lighting creates subtle shadows across the floor.

Lorna Brown, Reading, 1990/2015, photographs on mylar, surveyor tripod, Plexiglas, print on di-bond, speakers. SFU Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2015.

Blaine Campbell Photography
A sparse gallery space with white walls and a concrete floor. A large black-and-white photograph of a seated figure reading is displayed on one wall. In the center, a minimalist lamp on a tripod stand provides soft illumination. A second smaller photograph is mounted on another wall, showing a close-up of a person reading. The lighting creates subtle shadows across the floor.

Title

Reading

Artist

Lorna Brown

Year

1990

Medium

Photographs on mylar, surveyor tripod, Plexiglas, print on di-bond, speakers

Collection

SFU Art Collection

Donor

Gift of the Artist

Year Acquired

2015

In Reading, a woman commuting on public transit is the subject of a man's gaze while intimately bound to the private space her book provides. Both “readers” are considered alongside a camera disguised as a book (used by women in public in the early twentieth century), which allows its user to subvert the power dynamic of who is looking at who. 

Artists

Lorna Brown is a Vancouver-based artist, curator, writer, and editor. She is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects; was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004, and was Acting Director/Curator at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC. Brown has taught at SFU and Emily Carr University where she received an honorary doctorate of letters in 2015. Awards include the VIVA Award (1996). Her work is in the collections of the Belkin, SFU, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.