Lot
15
Crossing the Equator, Going South, Pacific Rim. #01

Chromira Colour c-print from a digital scan of a 4”x 5” Transparency, 2009

127 X 102 cm
I have had this burlesque fantasy that if I had had a figure tattooed on my stomach when I was a young man, she or he would have grown more robust as I have so grown. With the help of painter, Ian Shatilla, we created this fiction. I then was left alone in my studio to document the ensuing revelry as I played with gender shenanigans. All this was based on a ­‘hazing’ ritual that took place when ships crossed the equator: the new recruits celebrated in ­travesty.
Biographical note
Evergon currently lives with his mother in Montreal. He continues his 37-year teaching career at Concordia University. His 35-year international career images primarily, but not exclusively, gay male culture. Concerned with technology, his early photographs explored non-silver processes and electrostatic works. These were followed by instant imaging photographs that culminated with 1 x 2 meter colour Polaroid prints. In the last ten years, Evergon’s works has included larger-than-life nudes of his Mother, “Margaret & I,” and a selection of images gleaned from his lifetime trove of memorabilia accompanied with self-portraits, “Chez Moi: Domestic Content.” In “XXX/L and Passion Plays,” Evergon presented life-size images of himself cavorting with other men. These images are concerned with the crosshatch between images of pornography with the classical icons of Western art. The latest work, “Sailor’s Lament,” is an installation of two videos, a photograph, wall text and a group of photographs of Evergon strutting for his camera wearing a grass skirt, a sailor’s hat, and a tattoo of a red haired mermaid. Evergon has exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2008), the Musée d’art de Joliette (2007), the Glenbow Museum, Calgary (2007), the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2006) and the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York City (2006). Represented by Galerie Trois Points, Montréal, Edward Day Gallery, Toronto and Galerie St-Laurent + Hill, Ottawa.