John McFetrick lives with his dog Hilo (HEE-lo) on Galiano Island. Only one of them is an extrovert. John writes and makes photographs of things that capture his attention. Hilo sniffs stuff and makes friends wherever he goes. John’s work has appeared in many juried exhibitions from Edinburgh, where he lived before moving half way across the world to live in a forest on Galiano Island. He’s shown his work here and there, and has exhibited at the Sooke Fine Arts Show six times over the last ten years. He created and facilitated a youth photography collective called Little Clickers, and then curated an exhibition of the group’s work at the Catherine Holahan gallery at Galiano’s public library. While he was living in Edinburgh, he was an honourary fellow and Artist in Residence at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, and before that he created and facilitated the Bus Stop Lottery Project, a community-based photography group, and curated its work for an exhibition at the Craigmillar Community Arts Centre. He co-founded the Democratic Camera Club at Stills Gallery, Scotland’s Centre of Photography.
John’s own photography may be described as rural/urban (depending on where he is when he hits the shutter release) still life, but admits that the description is incomplete. He takes photographs of the sorts of things most people pass by without a moment’s thought, those abandoned and discarded things, the ephemeral contents of rural/urban space. He’s obsessed by the petrifying coincidence which he loosely defines as surrealism characterized by the unexpected juxtaposition of unrelated things/objects: e.g. a pinstripe suit swaddling a mackerel, riding atop a hospital gurney pushed down a sidewalk by a gorilla dressed as a kangaroo. While he has never seen or photographed such a sight, he nevertheless pursues the strange and unexpected findings left behind by a constantly moving society always in search of the next big thing.
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