GALLERY 881

881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
gallery881.com
@gallery881_

David: a show about mortality
by Bill Pusztai

Exhibition
July 25 - August 9, 2025

Opening Reception
Friday, July 25, 2025 from 5 - 9pm

In April 2024, David Weir was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Bill Pusztai, a photographer, followed him through diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, doing a shoot every few weeks. These images are the result of their collaboration. This show has been accepted by Garner Narrative Gallery for the 2025 Louisville Photo Biennial, September 5 to November 9, 2025. Gallery 881 is proud to present a preview exhibition also serving as fundraiser to cover printing and shipping costs.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the exhibition contains nudity.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

How does one be a friend to someone with a potentially terminal diagnosis?

As a wise woman once said to me, "the price of any love is that someone leaves first", so the task, with any friendship really, is to make the pain worthwhile. Or if one can't deal with the pain, one leaves in advance. You can only respect that decision, it cannot and should not be argued with, as it may be the most responsible choice for many people. How much worse to be a shitty friend when the remaining time is short?

I think this became clear to me in the 1980s. I worked for a nursing agency caring for people dying of AIDS (that sounds very clinical ... it was my community, my friends and lovers). Families regularly abandoned their children / siblings / parents / partners, and friends often disappeared. In addition to the shame around AIDS, there was also a shame around terminal illness, as if they has somehow failed their loved one, or maybe, they felt a taint by association. And many people have the attitude that if one can't have the expectation of "forever", it's not worth the effort (you see this with romantic relationships too, of course).

Most of us carry on with this sort of anticipation of "a long time", even if we're not thinking in terms of forever. Until we're forced to, we rarely think about the idea that everything we are or do has a definite termination point. When we're forced, we often think, well, what am I? Why am I doing x, y and z? In that way, we have a big part of our identity stripped from us.

You can look at this body of work as me doing my best to be a good friend, whether or not there's a future in it. Be here now, as some guy once said. And a lot of it is informed by what David wanted in the moment - luckily, we are well aligned in those ways.

I frequently work with nude subjects. Very often just the subject, nude, on a plain backdrop. I reject the idea that a nude is either porn or sexless fine art (art without libido? what even is that?). I don't even try to fit into that framing of the issue, it is entirely inadequate to my lived experience. Because of that I also reject the standard ideas about the kinds of bodies that should be represented. We all know the litany - young, thin, white, cis. Ironically those standards all seem to be based around the viewer finding the subject (object) to be desirable - even, or especially, when it's not porn.

So is this porn? I would say, definitively not. To me porn is art mainly about sex. Without erasing David's sexuality, I don't think that's the main theme in these photos - although it can't entirely *not* be there either.

All those ideas came together for me in the "Cut Piece" inspired shoot. "Cut Piece" was performance art, first instantiated by Yoko Ono in 1964, and I had been thinking about it because 2024 was the 60th anniversary. In the original, Yoko sat still and allowed people to snip pieces of her clothing and carry them away. It's a very complex piece, but important to me at the time were ideas about the violence of being stripped by other people, in a context where clothing can be understood as public identity or perhaps protection. Meanwhile I'm thinking about David, who's being stripped of his identity by a potentially-terminal diagnosis. Undressing himself, in an unmistakable and irreversable way.

This show contains nudity, so please do not view it if that is illegal for you or you just don't want to see it.

WHY NUDITY?

Some ideas.

Nudity can be an expression of openness, and through the process of being intently seen, of revelation. It defies the judgemental viewer who insists that it's ugly, or that particular bodies are ugly. The difference between having clothing cut from one's body by other people, as opposed to removing one's own, is the difference between an attack and self-revelation.

In this context, this sort of revelation is an emotional preparation for a process that's going to strip away many of the niceties of polite society. Cancer is not polite, radiation is not polite, chemo is not polite, they are all blunt force and counter-force. There's a stark lesson in the difference between what's truly necessary and what just feels necessary because of social conventions.

Nudity is also a reminder that in almost all human expression, sex - by its presence or absence - is a part of the text or subtext. Sick people and disabled people are routinely desexualised, ostensibly to protect them, but it's pretty clear it doesn't; all it does is give abusers a good cover story. It's a problem that cannot be dealt with without granting people their sexuality and the autonomy to manage it, everywhere, all the time.

When people are sick they often feel betrayed by their body and distanced from it. A lot of people have that feeling about aging as well. One's body being witnessed by another human being can be a piece of bringing sense of self and body back together.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

I was born in 1965, and spent the first 18 years of my life in Hamilton, a post-industrial town on the southern tip of Lake Ontario in South-eastern Canada.

I left in 1984 to go to University in Toronto, and on the side studied Western and Chinese calligraphy & painting; that was interrupted by the AIDS die-off of the late 80s and early 90s. I wasn't able to get back to studying visual expression until the late 90s, when I started a four year Graphic Design program at Ontario College of Art and Design (now OCAD University), graduating with a diploma approximately equivalent to a Bachelor of Design (Associate of the Ontario College of Art & Design, 2002). While there I started working with one of the old Mavica digital cameras that used 3.5" disks for storage; I was hooked.

I had a studio in Toronto from 2003 until I moved to Vancouver BC in 2011. At present I work out of my studio in Vancouver. I have occasional gallery shows, most recently at garner narrative gallery of contemporary fine art, but mostly my work is seen online or in publications like Teufelsfeige un Witwenblume, Historische Zierpflanzen - Geschichte, Botanik, Verwendung (Devil's Fig and Scabious, Historic Ornamentals - History, Botany, Use) by Bartha-Pichler, Geiser, and Zuber (Pro Specie Rara / CMVerlag), the National Geographic Illustrated Guide to Nature: From Your Back Door to the Great Outdoors (National Geographic Society), Lighting, the Soul of Car Design by Driving Vision News, and Utne Reader.

In 2013, Clark Nikolai made a short art-house documentary about me, Bill is a Photographer. It plays now and again at LGBT film festivals.

billpusztai.com

Gallery 881 is pleased to present Crossover, a solo exhibition of new photographic work by Canadian-Australian artist Andrew Latreille. The show features large-scale prints, a physical installation, and an audiovisual display from his latest body of work. This installation challenges our historical perception of forest fires by removing the blaze from its expected context. Instead of chaos and heat, Latreille captures the haunting beauty of post-burn landscapes under the reflected light of a subzero winter full moon. The result is a quiet yet powerful visual essay on climate, perception, and transformation. 

GALLERY 881

881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
gallery881.com
@gallery881_

CROSSOVER
by Andrew Latreille

Exhibition
June 11 - July 10, 2025

Opening Reception
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 from 5 - 8pm

Artist Talk
Saturday, June 21, 2025 from 2 - 3pm

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

“Day turns to night, and night becomes day, smoke obscures the beating sun’s rays, the fire’s intensity overpowers the moon’s cool soft light.”

This point, known amongst fire professionals as Crossover, describes a threshold where perception and time are destabilized.

In this project, Latreille purposefully removes the forest fire from its expected seasonal and emotional context, placing it instead in the stillness of a subzero, moonlit winter. By relocating the subject in both time and light, Crossover creates a perceptual and temporal shift—where day could be night, perhaps night is day.

As Edward Struzik outlines in his book Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire, our cultural response to wildfire—from the 19th through 21st centuries—has been shaped by fear, leading us to treat fire solely as an enemy. This mindset, reinforced by sensational media coverage, overlooks fire’s ecological role and perpetuates a cycle of avoidance rather than adaptation.

Born in Australia and now living in British Columbia, Latreille’s relationship with fire is deeply personal. From childhood memories of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires to the dense smoke of recent Canadian summers, fire has always loomed as a destructive force. Perhaps though, that is what we’ve been taught. Crossover acknowledges the immature relationship settlers have with fire on the land, which has led to an unhealthy accumulation of fuel and an increase in catastrophic burns. This stands in direct contrast to the mature relationship held by Indigenous peoples, whose long understanding of fire as a vital ecological process continues to inform sustainable land stewardship.

Photographed between November 2021 and March 2023, Crossover captures the remains of two remote British Columbian burn sites from the 2021 fire season—landscapes far from human settlement. Here the fires unfold quietly and largely unnoticed, eclipsed in media coverage by fires deemed more urgent—those threatening homes and infrastructure. Perhaps the only report on their scale is the density of smoke that drifts across our skies. Under the cool, diffuse light of the full moon, the burned forest reveals itself in a new clarity, carbon-coated trees casting elongated shadows across the snow. These once-dense woodlands, known for their enclosed softness and layered biodiversity, become transparent. The topography is exposed, seemingly infinite. Transformed by light, temperature, and time into a space of quiet reflection and sublime potential.

Latreille’s practice is rooted in a search for liminal moments, those transitional spaces where change occurs, often imperceptibly. He is drawn to environments shaped by both human intervention and natural forces, creating images not of what is physically present, but of what his feelings witness. In this series, the landscape becomes a space of awe; anxiety, beauty, and ultimately, hope.

The fires Latreille photographed burned far beyond populated areas—massive, remote events that most people only glimpse through drifting smoke. By entering those isolated spaces long after the flames had passed, out of season, and under full moonlight—he invites viewers to consider what often remains unseen. These are not images of catastrophe, but of continuity. Not endings, but thresholds. Through scale, texture, and light, Latreille aims to reconnect us to our transforming environment and suggest that even in devastation, beauty remains possible.

This project does not capture a single moment in time, but rather a continuum—linking past, present, and potential future. It’s about the space between destruction and regeneration, and the sublime experience of choosing to be still within it.

BIOGRAPHY

Andrew Latreille is an Australian-born, Vancouver-based visual artist whose photographic practice investigates the relationships between time, environment, and human impact. With a background in architecture and a deep commitment to long-term visual inquiry,Latreille’s practice moves beyond conventional documentation to explore perceptual shifts and liminal spaces—those transitional moments where he can reveal the unexpected or the emotion of a place.His most recent series, titled Crossover, positions forest fire not as an apocalyptic force but as a necessary actor within ecological cycles. Created under subzero full-moon conditions between 2021and 2023, the series documents the haunting aftermath of British Columbia’s 2021 fire season. Byisolating thesescorched landscapes in winter, Latreille encourages viewers to reconsider wildfire asboth destructive and sublime—offering hope within devastation and light within shadow. Theimagesexplores “Crossover,” a term used by fire professionals to describe the moment when conditions shift and fire becomes uncontrollable. In Latreille’s hands, it becomes a metaphor for emotional and environmental transformation.

His fascination with these threshold moments—what he calls harnessing liminal space—stems in part from growing up in a creative family in Melbourne and later deepened through his architectural studies at the University of Melbourne and his subsequent photographic career in Canada. His architectural thesis examined the poetic relationship between photographic film grain and the speed of wine fermentation, signaling an early interest in how process, material, and time intersects.In 2018, Latreille exhibited at the Venice Biennale’sTime Space Existence exhibition, showcasing hisThen and Now series. In this series, he explored transitional moments of architecture under construction, juxtaposing these with smaller images of the finished project. This international presentation emphasised his approach to photography of looking beyond the immediate to reveal deeper cultural and societal narratives.

Latreille’s practice has been recognized by the Lucie Awards, Black & White Spider Awards, and the Architecture Photography Masterprize, and is regularly featured in national and international exhibitions. He is a dedicated community contributor, serving as a National Board Member and Vancouver Chapter President of the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators (CAPIC),and as an ambassador for Phase One and Arca Swiss Cameras.He lives and works in Vancouver on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, raising two sons with his wife and continually seeking meaning in the evolving relationships between humans and the land they inhabit

andrewlatreillestudio.com