The exhibition CURRENT: Photography as Pause marks the launch of the new partnership between Gallery 881 and Emily Carr University and features seven emerging photographic artists from ECU’s BFA and MFA Programs.

Within the constant flow of images, CURRENT: Photography as Pause is an invitation to consider photography as a means of being present. Whether investigating the photographic image as an object by expanding its meaning and surface through material interventions, questioning the authority of photographic representations by using the camera to reveal gender and identity stereotypes or utilizing the photographic studio as a site to unpack and visualize the anxieties and traumas surrounding immigration, the artists ask the viewer to pause so we can once more discover photography's potential to slow down time for us.

We are taken out of the stream of endless scrolls and are faced with our assumptions–often created in the complex digitized world where the photographic medium has become our primary communication tool but frequently takes us out of the present moment.

CURRENT: Photography as Pause features artists Laura Ayres, Claudia Goulet-Blais, Julia Kerrigan, Charlie Mahoney-Volk, Paniz Mani, Maria Michopulu, and Parumveer Walia and was curated by Karen Zalamea, Vancouver artist and educator, and John Goldsmith, director of Gallery 881.