THE FALLS

3 May - 16 June 2018

Curated by Lucie McIntosh

Anna Cummings

The Reversing Falls are a series of rapids that occur in the narrow gorge where the Saint John River empties into the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, Canada. The whirlpools and conflicting tides created where the two bodies of water meet are due to differences in salinity and temperature, as well as to underwater ravines that pull the water underneath itself at high tide. A couple hundred meters upstream sits Irving Pulp and Paper Limited, an imposing paper factory that emits dense, sulfur-scented smoke day and night, and has been accused on several occasions of dumping industrial waste into the river. Part of a developing series of single-channel videos, The Falls skews both the direction and inertia of the rapids, a stunning natural phenomenon’s attempted escape from the proximity of human industry. 

Anna Cummings (n. St John’s, Canada, 1990) is a documentary and fine-art photographer based in Paris, France. Her practice is increasingly based around reflections between terrestrial and mental landscapes as a means of alternative representation of the border in contemporary Europe. She has participated in group exhibitions at Konnektor Forum für Künste in Hannover, Germany (2016) and 47/49 Tanner Street, London (2017), and was recently integrated into Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa’s edition catalog in Lisbon, Portugal (2018). In 2013 she obtained a Bachelor’s degree with honours in Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies from the Munk School of International Relations at the University of Toronto; she is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Photography and Contemporary Art at the Université de Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis, expected in June 2018.

Image: Anna Cummings, The Falls, 2017, detail, film still, HD video, stereo, 3:43

Courtesy of the artist