Written by Miray Eroglu
Working in the Southern Gulf islands, April describes herself as a “high tech pioneer,” using advanced technology to capture profoundly timeless moments and create sets, “artificial environments,” that could be either from the past or future. Experimenting with the nature of embodiment, April’s photographs pass through frames of bodily and cognitive existence, at once isolated yet connected. Each photograph has its own mood. Having worked in many environments, from taking photos at night in Toronto, living mountainous in Kaslo, and spending time at the beach, April expresses her enthusiasm and excitement about creating futuristic vistas and exploring new terrains, offering ways out of, and into the human psyche.
What inspires you to create?
I don’t really know how to stop - it's literally what will get me through a day of boring or hard work. I create these little worlds in my mind and imagine the things around me and how they might be integrated differently in those worlds like a parallel universe.
Which themes or subjects currently speak to you most in your work?
For a long time, I was really inspired by isolation and the different ways being alone has an effect on a person. More recently I’ve been interested in adornment and ritual costume - which are really some of the most universal practices to humankind.
Introvert Enlightenment II, print, 35mm film photograph, 4 x 6" - 16 x 20", 2021, $17-$85.
What is your background in the arts? What did you study at OCADU and what were some projects you worked on?
I majored in painting and drawing but I took a different course each year that I was curious about: wood sculpture; printmaking, and paper making; photography; performance. During university I mostly made oil paintings of surreal-ish nudes in pastel colours with distorted proportions and without limbs. The last two years really inspired me, [especially] in my final year gaining confidence in my own body enough to use it as an artform. At OCAD I also painted self-portraits.
How did you find the environment of making art in art school compared to on your own?
I think it was good for me because it gave me the chance to see my work in a respectful way. I had to, in order to do my studies. I personally think my schooling could have focused on creating good quality ideas from scratch (the initial spark of inspiration) as opposed to working from prompts. There could have been a class on the financial aspects of supporting yourself, applying, working with galleries, curators, and the business side of things. The beginning and the end, they didn’t really focus on those aspects.
Since completing your BFA at OCADU, how have your projects expanded?
I focused completely on photography and prop making. While I was travelling, I didn’t have the space for painting, but I could take self-portraits along the way in motels or in interesting bits of nature. I moved permanently to Mayne island, bought property and built a studio to fit my needs. Now I have the space to create more complex photographs. I haven’t worked collaboratively very much since I live so remotely, but my husband and I put together a group show in Victoria on the theme of tree planting.
What prompted you to move to the West coast? How does the art community and landscape of the Southern Gulf Islands influence your work?
I moved to BC at first to plant trees and to get away from Southern Ontario. The quiet really helps me to work in my studio. Mayne’s population has really given me the opportunity to expand my skills in the field of construction and building that I probably wouldn’t have gotten the chance to in the city.
How do you engage with the arts community? What are some causes that are meaningful to you?
Personally, I feel pretty isolated from any arts community and I genuinely wanted to change that at the beginning of last year. It was one of my goals to reach out into Victoria and meet like-minded people. But this past year has changed, and I haven’t been able to do that. It gave me more time to work on my art, but I would like to talk to people about it and get some feedback.
As for some causes that I feel passionate about, I've always had a soft spot for mental health, have explored that in my work and think it's only recently being taken seriously. But I've also been reading and understanding the truth about recycling and it's really heartbreaking.
What is your relationship like with technology?
I see myself as a “high-tech pioneer,” I still have a hand well pump, but I also have wireless Bose headphones. I definitely use technology like photoshop for designing, and websites, but my practice is a lot more analogue, building things with hand-tools.
Describe some of your photographs at Sweetpea and their meanings…
Dissociation Croquet is about making what is inside outside and outside inside - about the confusion, isolation and dissociation I used to have in the past when talking to people or speaking in public that felt like my awareness was escaping my body.
Dissociation Croquet, print, 35mm film photograph, 16 x 20", $75.
Introvert Enlightenment is about isolation and silence, how it can be isolating even if you are around people if they don’t understand or accept who you are. To create these photos, I carried 700 pounds of frozen sand up the hill to my studio. I had to crush it back into fine grains by stomping on it. Then, I did the whole shoot in the winter without heat because my generator could only manage to power the lights. This project felt very ritualistic and somewhat monastic.
Introvert Enlightenment III, print, 35mm film photograph, 4 x 6" - 16 x 20", 2021, $17-$85.
Hide and Seek is essentially about a wormhole that transports you to this space where you can take off the artificial you and dip your toe into the idea that you can be whatever you want while you are in there. [This is where you] can shed the facade or the idea of “you.” [It is] the vacuum you can scream into.Coincidently, it also depicts masks and the concern for the breathability of the air which are the prevailing concerns as of the last year.
Hide and Seek I, print, 35mm film photograph, 4 x 6" - 16 x 20", 2021, $17-$85.
Perverse Cow - I really got into the idea of Boanthropy (a psychological disorder where one believes that they are a cow or bull). It also plays with concepts of utopia and perfect artificial “outdoors.”
Perverse Cow, print, 35mm film photograph, 16 x 20", 2018, $17-$85.
Hypersomnia is a project entirely about memories I had as a child waking up in really weird and uncomfortable places. Once, I fell asleep in the cab of a tractor while my stepdad was bailing hay. I think, as a kid, whenever I felt overwhelmed, I would just fall asleep.
Hypersomnia, print, 35mm film photograph, 16 x 20", 2019, $85.
I love how your work engages with multimedia, merging video, photography, film with the fine arts. How do you feel working in each medium, and do you have a favourite way to tell a story through your art?
It's kind of interesting, I actually just only recently thought of myself as a multidisciplinary artist rather than a photographer. The photography in my process of making artwork is maybe only 10 percent of the project.
My favourite way to tell a story is finding processes that I’ve never seen in art or would have never thought to be an art process. I build fences as my day job, but I would never see a fence as a work of art, and it isn’t really until I made it into a set for Chromatopia and it lifts it to that level. I also learned a lot about growing grass for that project. And the idea that hand cutting a patch of grass with scissors every week became part of my art process really pleases me even though I don’t think that the viewer can ever see that it just makes me laugh.
How do you plan and create the compositions and sets to stage your photographs? What inspires your designs?
I read a lot about a lot of different subjects and they all come together to inspire my work. I don’t really like relying on other people to get my projects done. I like to have my hands on every aspect of it. It starts with my sketchbook, that I always keep with me, it's like a childhood blanket. I always have about ten projects on the go in different developing stages. I'll play around with them for a year, up to three years, merging and mending the ideas. It can take about six months from a finished idea to completion. I see each project as its own little parallel universe - what's in the frame is all that exists. During this time, I also keep an eye out for cheap or free materials I can use for my next projects. Then, when I’m ready to start, I buy the rest of the materials needed to make the props. The props are usually made with techniques that I’ve recently learned and find inspiring, for example, when I used concrete for the first time after I was newly hired to work in construction - I was obsessed.
For Introvert Enlightenment I created dozens of concrete hands by pouring concrete in rubber gloves and experimented by pouring concrete into everything. Right now, I’m obsessed with Renaissance fashion. My studio is filled with black velvet, silver embroidery thread, pearls, lace and ribbon. The closer I get to finishing the props and the set the more stressed I get. It all comes together with the photos. This is where I usually meet problems that I have mostly figured out this year by upgrading my camera which makes taking self-portraits easier. I do a test shoot with one roll then adjust lighting, composition, etc. and re shoot until the images I have in my mind are physically in front of me. The longer that I'm in front of the camera the more I enjoy it.
Introvert Enlightenment I, print, 35mm film photograph, 4 x 6" - 16 x 20", 2021, $17-$85.
What is your relationship to the camera like, as photographer (or director) and subject-model?
The longer I am in front of the camera the more comfortable I feel which is when the good photographs come out. Many of my best photos have been the very last photo on a roll. But there is a lot of mystery between myself and the camera, I don’t know exactly what it is seeing. I can guess and narrow it down but in the end it's always a bit mysterious. When I’m in front of the camera it's a bit like a song that starts out slow and gets faster as inspiration gets more intense. I really like the moments in between taking photographs though when I'll lay on the floor or lay over props or just sit there breathing and let my body react to the scene. I wish my camera had a life of its own to capture these moments of ease. In a way these shoots are very private because I am always alone but also very exposing because I'm presenting myself as my artwork.
How closely do you work from your subject?
What I'm making right now doesn’t really exist yet. I read this book on the history of fashion which was really helpful to see examples and images I can work off; I form my own version of that in my head that I want to replicate into real life. A lot of it is in my head, but I do look at historical images. Thinking about things which don’t exist yet, searching, looking for something for the first time, you have to be open-minded. If you’re closed minded, you will find what already exists.
What upcoming projects are you excited about?
I'm working on a project that in my head I call Rituals, but it doesn’t have a proper name yet. It is about adornment, sacred and meaningful clothing, as well as what the clothing does to the person who wears it. It additionally plays with themes of the future and what the important people of the future will adorn themselves with. It’s this sort of space – Renaissance inspired project – imagining what it would have been like if people from the Renaissance could go to space.
I'm also working on the branding of my husband's company Life Aquatic Marine Endeavours (L.A.M.E. Inc) which in the summer will involve some Bill Murray/Wes Anderson film inspired underwater photography with lots of bright colours.
Miray Eroglu holds a B.A. in Art History, French and Medieval Studies from McGill University and is completing her M.A. in Art History and Archaeology at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Currently she is an editor for Lapis Journal and an intern in the Islamic Art Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Find April Winter on Instagram at @aprilbluewinter and at www.aprilwinter.com