Leah Oates is a fluxus analogue photographer who has exhibited extensively in the United States and Canada, particularly in the New York and Toronto metropolitan areas, as well as in Europe. Notable solo exhibitions in New York include the Brooklyn Public Library, Susan Eley Fine Art, Arsenal Gallery, Center for Book Arts, Sarah Nightingale Gallery, A Taste of Art Gallery, A4L Gallery, and AIR Gallery. Museums Leah has exhibited at include fine institutions such as the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, Turku City Art Museum in Finland, and the Florida State University Museum. Leah is a Fulbright fellow and has received several other fellowship awards including with the Vermont Studio Center.
An experimental photographer, Leah Oates captures multiple exposures on specific frames in-camera, shooting on 35mm film, and then processing as well as modifying her negatives digitally. Leah Oates’ photographs are not documentative in nature, despite being captured in specific cities such as Toronto or New York, but rather timeless due to their lack of specific markings which indicate time and place. These works typically focus on shots of overhead trees, specifically which have left barren by the cold winter or autumn, leaving a dead and decayed quality to the composition. The nimble limbs on these deciduous-in-winter saplings are taken within a moment of reflection rather than seeking for a final composition, making them fluxus in character. Through the multiple exposures and saturation of the film as well as light on these specific subjects, there is a strong sense of the impact and power of erosion as a theme within the photographs. The erosion and corrosive qualities within Leah Oates’ work becomes reflected in multiple panels of frames which distort the trees, barren foliage, and sky into realms which seem ethereal and reveal poetic inclinations.
Such deep reflections in the capturing of these what would otherwise be unsightly cropped ‘landscapes’ are accentuated with photographic and artistic manipulation to have greater purpose and meaning beyond their initial appearances. Many of the subjects contained with Leah Oate’s works can be found in your local park or pond / lake as these are not scenes of extraordinary circumstances of aesthetics. Rather, she captures the mundane, the bleak, the objects of despair in the dead frost of winter and autumn creating a reconfiguration of their structure for us to meditate on. These works are meant to be mindful reflections with their qualities of multiple exposures, frames, and distortion of color with the appearance of disfiguration and decay. As if we woke up in a stupor or had a hallucinogenic revelation, these images greet us with a sense of momentary presence of our immediate and familiar surroundings in unfamiliar and dynamic ways. There is more to the surface to Leah Oate’s work than first impressions, these images are meant to be reflected on in their hazy distortion of our environments, as if we have escaped this realm into an atmosphere of frozen silence and suspended animation.
Toronto - 2024 - V. 48 is one of Leah Oate’s most unusual photographs within her portfolio due to the increased focus on the sky rather than mostly on barren, nimble trees. The grainy qualities of the photograph and over-exposure accentuates the traits of the analogue photography. With lucid contrast and an everlasting cloud contained with minimal foliage, the photo appears like a momentary lapse of consciousness, as if having obtained a near-death experience, especially with the symbolism of the ominous and haunting clouds.
Containing a sense of dedication to her subjects and consistency, Leah Oates offers an extensive study on expanding our awareness into the multitude of overviews regarding the manipulation of nature. Like a poetic muse, she converts the mundane, the barren, the bleak and crystalizes these forms into splashes of saturation, bleaches of color, and vivid distortions which help us reconsider our surroundings. These subtle works are meant to have us reconfigure our notions of how experiences and momentary lapses of recognition can be harnessed into streams of new consciousness. To reconsider mindful awareness based on imagery seemingly reflecting a rapid state of erosion within our immediate environments.