Cheryl Pagurek

Watching, an exhibit of multi-media artist Cheryl Pagurek’s work on the theme of surveillance, runs from August 22 to October 24, 2026 at Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Montreal.

Artist reception: Saturday August 22, 2 pm to 5 pm.

The presentation will launch her latest interactive digital collage Refresh, in the context of her previous examinations of the omniscient gaze of surveillance, the forms it takes in society, and our changing perception of its presence. Featuring photographic, video and interactive works that span 17 years, the exhibit reveals the changing power relationships that have evolved around the concept of watching: who is watching and who is being watched?

The photographic series High Value Targets, created in 2009, contrasts military footage with intimate recordings of the personal space of the artist’s garden, locating a private world of beauty within a larger world of conflict. The framing of viewfinder targets and night vision scopes evokes state control, the relationships of knowledge and power implicit in the act of photography, and the intertwining of photography and war. By 2018, nine years later when the short film White saucer: surveillant eye was made, society had become more aware of the wide net of electronic surveillance and data collection that monitors our everyday communications, transactions and locations. In the film, a drone’s eye view tracks the artist’s movements, matching the aerial perspectives of news media, police and military footage of world events.

The exhibit culminates by fast-forwarding another 8 years to 2026, when Refresh was created to engage with the now widespread acceptance of pervasive digital surveillance, and our ease with picturing ourselves on camera in public spaces and on social media. In a new twist, the interactive collage flips the power dynamics of watching, so that the gallery visitor is given agency by being surveilled. They now become part of the creative act of building a lively collage, precisely because they are being watched and their movements tracked.

Garden imagery once again fosters a sense of renewal and hope, this time bringing the materiality of drawing and painting into the digital realm of code. Keenly observed scenes from the artist’s garden, each view captured in several artistic media, are never seen whole. Rather, they are fractured into collage pieces and recombined to form newly imagined reconstructions. A potent mix of organic, human and technological touchpoints comes together in a hybrid work, a responsive installation that evolves in real time, while reflecting the world around it. In an era of legitimate concern about the uses of code and technology, here they are harnessed for the creation of beauty and a connection to the handmade. The coded algorithms are designed to evoke lyrical visual juxtapositions, fueled by viewers’ actions.

The Watching exhibit’s timely contemplation of surveillance is characterized by the artist’s ongoing concern for holding oppositions in tension. She accentuates interconnections between the contrasts of public and private, power and vulnerability, past and present, physical and virtual, urban and natural worlds, to craft a cohesive whole from disparate source materials.

More information on the Gallery website

The artist gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council

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