I just want to be taken seriously as an artist...

Shari Hatt

Shari Hatt's photographic and video work is preoccupied with issues of seeing and the values that viewers attach to comprehension based, in part, on the impact of social class, gender and the mass media's incessant promotion of spectacles. Subject matter may vary but Hatt's focus remains steadfast on the essential individual and social relationships to building visual comprehension.

The exhibition at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery comprises two recent bodies of work. The first is a series of ten photographic portraits of professional clowns. The flatness of the photographs can be frustrating but Hatt's subjects are both monumental and ambiguous, psychologically charged. She succeeds in conveying this by depicting the tactility, textual contours and angular expression of each clown. The second is a video projection with clowns telling art world jokes. These professional clowns hope to subvert all levels of appeal. Their frivolous hijinks and old fashioned slap stick are a preamble to the delivery of art world jokes that invariably fall flat. Each joke becomes emptier, another hollow gesture, both abstract and distant.

Hatt is from Halifax, Nova Scotia and currently lives in Toronto and Montreal. She studied at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Concordia University, Montreal, and The Banff Centre for the Arts, exhibiting her work in North America and internationally since 1993. Hatt has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including The Duke and Duchess of York Photography Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Bureau for International Education Celanese Canada Fellowship.

The artist’s work has been acquired for numerous collections including The Liberace Museum, The Canadian Museum for Contemporary Photography, The Art Bank of the Canada Council, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Museum London, The Confederation Centre for the Arts, The Norton Museum of Art, Seneca College, and The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

The artist wishes to thank Jon Tupper, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Wayne Baerwaldt and the President’s Scholar-in-Residence Program, ACAD, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, The Canada Council for the Arts, Les Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec, Rainlake Productions, Laurie MacMillan, Gary Burns, Hutch Hutchinson and Tracey Lammirato