This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition, Chris Gergley: Copy Work at the Contemporary Art Gallery, September 7 – November 8, 2007.

The publication disregards the conventions of an exhibition catalogue and instead features texts by writers and art historians Steve Edwards, John O’Brian, and John Roberts, writer Maria Fusco, and curator Jenifer Papararo.




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Copy Work

Chris Gergley

Chris Gergley is a Vancouver-based photographer who has developed a signature style over several serial projects. His first major work, *Vancouver Apartments*, is a series of eighty-eight photographs of the lobbies of middle class apartment buildings. This work explores the success of typological photography, as practiced by artists as diverse as Bernd and Hilla Becher or Ed Ruscha, as well as documents the quick decay of Modernist apartment buildings in Vancouver. Queen City is a growing record of images of Regina, Saskatchewan, Gergley's hometown. His photographs are deliberately commonplace, capturing what is typical to many small North American cities. For his solo exhibition at CAG Gergley will present a new body of work. *Copy Work* will include four separate components, all of which include elements culled from his archive of images and photographic paraphernalia. In large part, *Copy Work* is a reworking and reframing of Gergley's photographic documentation and work for other artists. The exhibition will also include *Gobo*, a series of slide projections, a presentation for the gallery's street front windows and an artist's bookwork, which will include texts by John O'Brian, Maria Fusco, Steve Edwards, John Roberts and Jenifer Papararo.

This exhibition is sponsored by The Audain Foundation. 

Curated by Jennifer Paparo


Essay: "Writing out Failure," Jenifer Papararo

A small light is placed on the gallery floor. The shape of this light resembles an old accordion camera. It projects a shape of a star, with the word BIG written inside, on the wall.

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Three photographs on the gallery walls are visible in this image. The photo in the middle shows a person’s feet standing at the corner of a room. The person wears a pair of blue jeans. 

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Four photographs on the gallery walls are visible in this image. One of the photographs depicts a man’s severed head lying on the snow-covered ground.  

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This is an installation shot of Chris Gergley’s art photography exhibition. Various sized coloured photographs, some framed and some unframed, are mounted on the gallery walls. 

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This image shows a series of various-sized photographs installed on a gallery wall. Some of them are street snaps, and others are human and animal portraits. All photos are white framed.

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Two large-sized posters are installed on a gallery wall. The one on the left side is a photograph of a shelf filled with toys, and another poster shows countryside scenery with a car and a house. 

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A black carousel slide tray is placed on a pedestal installed in the middle of a gallery space. A tiny light is also installed on the floor around the corner of the same room. 

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This is an installation shot of Chris Gergley’s installation on the CAG facade. The windows are all covered by black sheets. Some coloured images are embedded in the cutout part of the black sheets. 

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Two of the CAG’s window spaces are visible in this image. The windows are all covered by black sheets. Some areas of the sheets are cut out to hold an image of a colour palette. 

Chris Gergley

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