Annie Briard: Refracted Fields is now on view at Surrey Art Gallery's offsite UrbanScreen venue

Kaleidoscopic projection reveals natural elements, from the grand vistas of the Coast Mountains to close-up images of roadside plants

Surrey Art Gallery has just unveiled its new exhibition Annie Briard: Refracted Fields at the offsite UrbanScreen venue. The artwork is on display every evening 30 minutes after sunset until midnight at Surrey Civic Plaza until July 29. Admission is free.

Refracted Fields presents a kaleidoscopic visual poem about the landscapes of British Columbia. The City Centre library façade optically spins apart to reveal rising tidewaters and meteor showers of light. Grand vistas of the Coast Mountains collide with close-up images of roadside plants. Floodplains, foothills, and forests rip, fold, and burn up to reveal new views and reborn landscapes. Each natural element in Briard’s newest video work is inextricably linked to its visual components and counterparts in a poetic reflection on landscape, place, time, and the conventions of sight.

With its subtle handmade transformations and tricks, Refracted Landscapes is a subversive challenge to the high-tech visual imagery that viewers have come to expect in the digital age. Briard’s projection combines studio-based and in-the-field experiments with prisms, coloured gels, and digital and physical layering and animating to deconstruct the ways we perceive the world around us.

Refracted Fields extends Briard’s ongoing practice that investigates the parallels between natural and artificial light, time, and perception, along with ecology, psychology, and neuroscience. With beginnings in Montreal and now working from the Pacific Northwest, she is known for her creations in expanded photography and digital media.

Briard’s work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including at Royale Projects in Los Angeles, Staring at the Sun at the Quebec Biennale, and MKG127 in Toronto. In Vancouver, her work has been shown inSuperlucent at Monica Reyes Gallery and Within the Eclipse at the Burrard Arts Foundation. Briard has been artist-in-residence at High Desert Test sites in California, the Wassaic Project in New York, SÍM Residency in Iceland, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Briard is a lecturer in photography and media arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. For Refracted Fields, she was assisted by students Miranda Firmston and Mike Partridge.

Visit Surrey Art Gallery for more information.

Post sponsored by Surrey Art Gallery.

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ART & DESIGNStir VancouverMay 21, 2025Partner Content, surrey art gallery, SURREY ART GALLERY, Surrey Art Gallery

Annie Briard: Refracted Fields is now on view at Surrey Art Gallery's offsite UrbanScreen venue

Kaleidoscopic projection reveals natural elements, from the grand vistas of the Coast Mountains to close-up images of roadside plants

Surrey Art Gallery has just unveiled its new exhibition Annie Briard: Refracted Fields at the offsite UrbanScreen venue. The artwork is on display every evening 30 minutes after sunset until midnight at Surrey Civic Plaza until July 29. Admission is free.

Briard is a lecturer in photography and media arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. For Refracted Fields, she was assisted by students Miranda Firmston and Mike Partridge.

Visit Surrey Art Gallery for more information.

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