The Vega Foundation, in partnership with The Power Plant, is proud to present Fogo, a solo exhibition of work by the internationally acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist Sharon Lockhart.

Over the course of four summers spent on Newfoundland’s Fogo Island, at Canada’s easternmost reaches, Sharon Lockhart developed a series of photographs and a film building upon core themes that have continued to define her career: an exploration of place, a durational approach to attention, and a long-term commitment to those who appear before her lens. This exhibition features her series of photographs, collectively entitled Fogo Island Portrait Studio, that pictures the island’s young residents. Working with these same protagonists, Lockhart also created WINDWARD—a film installation that brings to life the island’s striking geological formations, unique climate, and austere beauty.

Fogo Island Portrait Studio, the result of an open invitation to the artist’s studio, housed in a refashioned fishing shed, sees the island’s children in seven formal encounters with a still camera. Here, Lockhart presents daylit portraits, their singular subjects framed nonhierarchically to occupy equal space within each image. Posed with striking directness, the children possess a focus that counters the speed and omnipresence of mobile-phone imagemaking. Against black backgrounds, they assert a decided agency, positioning themselves as active participants in shaping their futures.

WINDWARD, Lockhart’s filmic exploration of Fogo’s present, sees time as it shifts and envelops, surging and calming in pace with the ever-present winds that shape life on the island. Finding precedent in Colin Low’s 1967 documentary The Children of Fogo Island—a symbol of the island’s past, witnessing youth as they interacted within their communities—Lockhart carefully observes the island’s geography, directing its youth in play amid fields of tall grass, volcanic rocks, and crashing waves. The sea, sky, light, and weather become essential in shaping its set of 12 compositions. Vastness takes hold as figures are made minute, appearing at distance in evocations of those that populate landscape painting of centuries past. Filmed on the island’s northern face—its windward end—the work takes cues from an unseen force: persistent gusts that descend from the Arctic, arriving on land as undeniable presences. In scenes choreographed from observation, the children of WINDWARD move in and out of sight, exploring Lockhart’s tableaux in their entireties. An inherited attunement to the environment, the ability to read and heed it, comes to the fore across Lockhart’s photography and film, poetically encapsulating perseverance in the face of a modern world.

This exhibition sees Lockhart return to The Power Plant for a second presentation, following her 2010 solo exhibition Podwórka, which took as its subject matter children playing in abandoned urban areas in Łódź, Poland.

Fogo is organized and developed by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and The Vega Foundation. Curated by Julia Paoli, Director & Curator, The Vega Foundation, with Kate Whiteway, Assistant Curator, The Vega Foundation, in dialogue with the curatorial team at The Power Plant.

WINDWARD is co-commissioned and co-produced by Shorefast/Fogo Island Arts, The Vega Foundation, and the National Gallery of Canada, with the support of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.