Northern noir

The world has a secret potential to transform itself at any moment into a film set.

Northern Noir was photographed during the summer and winter of 2015 in Northern Ontario and British Columbia, Canada. My intent was to create a series of film stills taken from an unknown and fictional film, more precisely, a crime film. I wanted to photograph the non-events that encircle the places where transgressive acts may have taken place. The banality of the scenes photographed both hides and yet hints at the presence of shady and malevolent happenings. These fragments capture unintentional and marginal details. Their mundane and anecdotal qualities are fetishized and magnified, adding a sense of dread to the otherwise indifferent and un-extraordinary decors. The series was realised over several road trips through the wilderness and towns of my youth. The facet of memory, my memory, real or imagined, links itself to the screen memories of the film still. The road is not only a physical space but also a space of the imagination, a state of mind where the past and present convene. These stills of a nameless film intertwine with the aura of a specific place and time, melding the impervious with the personal.

quoted from artist’s website

Roy has produced several series which all share the artist’s bold and cinematic aesthetic. Staged in laundrettes, motels, supermarkets and various other banal locations Roy creates hyper-realistic images that resemble film stills. Throughout her work Roy plays with ideas of the bizarre and the uncanny, whether it be a lone female figure walking along a deserted road in a vast landscape or a woman photographed through the wing mirror of a car, Roy’s photographs are permeated with an unsettling air. In her work Roy creates familiar still images of stereotyped heroines, using herself as the model Roy invents numerous characters for herself. This is a crucial element to her work, Roy has stated “It’s usually the male gaze, and the woman is the object to be looked at. So the idea was becoming the person who objectifies, but also objectifying myself. I just thought it was interesting to play the dual role.” quoted from Huxley–parlour Gallery

Kourtney Roy’s work is bound up in an ambiguous and cinematic image-making that borders the real and the fantastic. Her approach to photography provokes contemplation and reconfiguration of common place subjects via playful revelation of the bizarre and the uncanny. She is fascinated with exploring the boundaries of liminal spaces; whether spatial, temporal or psychological. By using herself as the principal subject in her work, the artist creates a compelling, intimate universe inhabited by a multitude of diverse characters that explore these enigmatic themes. (quoted from Kourtney Roy)