The Spaces Between Us: Jackie Wong
About the Exhibition
Can beauty result from destruction? Does opportunity come in the face of an obstacle? These are the questions posed in Jackie Wong’s two series of photographs exhibited in The Space Between Us. The answers to these questions, and concerning the interpretation of these photographs, lie in our perception.
Wong’s stunning clouds, seemingly innocuous at first glance, are, in nearly every instance, borne from disasters, man-made and natural. The explosion that rocked Beirut port in 2020, and BC and Californian wildfires, are just a few of the sources for these beautiful cloud formations. Does our perception of them change when we know their geneses?
In the same way that her views of the heavens cause us to consider the ground below, a similar reversal happens when we observe Wong’s obstacles. These boulders, tree trunks and snowballs, seemingly the bottom third of a long-gone snowman, block her path. While not uniform in size, these obstacles are all large enough to leave us wondering about their histories and how they came to be.
Photography toes the line in this relationship: our instinct as viewers is to take photos as implicitly factual. Wong’s clouds, born from disasters and transformed into photo-based watercolours, leave us unsettled, straddling that space in between.
About the Artist
Jackie Wong studied photography at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and holds Bachelors of Fine Art and Education from the University of British Columbia. She has taught art at Secondary Schools in BC since 1993 and in West Vancouver since 2002. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Northern BC, the Richmond Art Gallery and the West Vancouver Art Museum. Her practice includes photography, painting, and ceramics.
Tours, Workshops and Virtual Events
Visit the events page to view upcoming tours, workshops, and virtual events.
Explore the exhibition in this brief introductory video, produced by Gloria Wong.