GABRIELLE DE MONTMOLLIN
IMAGINARY FRIENDS

FEBRUARY 4 - FEBRUARY 28
OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2 - 5 PM

The Red Head Gallery is pleased to present Imaginary Friends, an exhibition by mixed media artist Gabrielle de Montmollin.

In the age of email and ‘selfies’ who sends postcards home from their travel destinations? Gabrielle de Montmollin’s imaginary friends do, that’s who. Breaking free from the artist’s black and white photographs her characters have morphed into colourful globe-trotting tourists. From the snow-covered Rockies, barreling over Niagara Falls, on the shores of Lake Muskoka and the wintery streets of Montréal, sailing the Atlantic to points further east de Montmollin’s real-in-art imaginary friends travel the world and send home visual “wish you were here” messages.

“De Montmollin is a very idiosyncratic artist who has succeeded in creating a sort of parallel world peopled by strange, contrary beings. At times they evoke gender issues but I think they extend beyond those issues to hint at our existential state. They have a profound sense of humour and cavort as ‘silly creatures’ dancing across the stage of our pretentions.” (from the exhibition essay by Ashley Johnson) 

Gabrielle de Montmollin began her career in television and film before switching her interest to still photography. For many years she worked exclusively with black and white film photographing throwaway plastic toys and dolls arranged in constructed, fantasy settings. Recently de Montmollin has been working with mixed media blending painting, drawing and montage elements with digital prints.

Gabrielle de Montmollin has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Belgium, Italy, France and The Netherlands.

www.gabrielledemontmollin.com