Erin Shirreff

Halves and Wholes

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Erin Shirreff, installation view, Halves and Wholes, view on Concrete Buildings, 2013-16, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Erin Shirreff, installation view, Halves and Wholes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Erin Shirreff, installation view, Halves and Wholes, view on Still (no. 3) and Still (no. 2) and Still (no.7), 2016, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Erin Shirreff, installation view, Halves and Wholes, view on Sculpture Park (Tony Smith, Amaryllis), 2006/2013, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Photo: Philipp Hänger/Kunsthalle Basel

Erin Shirreff, Concrete Buildings, 2013-16 (Video Still). Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Erin Shirreff, Concrete Buildings, 2013-16 (Video Still). Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Erin Shirreff, Concrete Buildings, 2013-16 (Video Still). Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Erin Shirreff, Still (no.9), 2016 (archival pigmet print). Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Erin Shirreff, poster for the exhibition, Halves and Wholes, Kunsthalle Basel, 2016. Design: Hammer

Erin Shirreff spielt in Basel mit Wahrheit und Wahrnehmung, Badische Zeitung (09/2016)
Die Aura des Scheiterns, Basler Zeitung (09/2016)
Die Kunst der Entschleunigung, Basellandschaftliche Zeitung (09/2016)
Erin Shirreff lehrt uns Geduld und richtiges Sehen, TagesWoche (09/2016)

Exhibition text and related events (PDF)
Press images (ZIP)

Erin Shirreff is not a photographer, she would tell you, even if the photographic image lies at the center of her practice. Known primarily for her photo- and video-based work, Shirreff is part of a generation of young artists whose reflections on photography have revitalized the medium, but who refuse act as photographers in the classical sense. And whereas in her work it often appears that art historical references abound (for instance to Donald Judd and Tony Smith, in two pieces in her Kunsthalle Basel exhibition, or to Medardo Rosso and others in previous works), her resultant still and moving images are rarely actually “about” such seeming references. Instead they mine the vexed questions of how images mean and matter to us, and how we negotiate the distance between an object and its photographic representation, or between a photographic representation and our memory of the things it represents. Her exhibition Halves and Wholes at Kunsthalle Basel is the Canadian artist’s first solo show in a European institution.