Lucy Alguire Catching Byways Flies

In her series Catching Byways Flies, Lucy Alguire examines Algonquin Woods, a small rustic cottage resort on the outskirts of Muskoka, the former locale of her family home. Memories of adolescence in this Northern lakeside setting are the point of departure for Alguire’s photographs, but it is her reflection on this past that imbues the work with meaning. Assuming a child-like state of boundless imagination, the artist becomes a proverbial bug catcher, capturing fleeting moments that buzz all around her childhood home, preserving and eternalizing them.

Arranged by season, the photographs in this exhibition mark the journey from spring—associated with birth, growth, and naivety—to winter—a time of year that evokes contemplation, decay, and passing. The images repeatedly return to the lake at the center of her childhood memories, functioning as the geographic glue that holds the surrounding area together. The lake also serves as a symbolic anchor to the series, as Alguire’s photographs not only document a place in transition—as of 2020, the resort was sold and is now being demolished and rebuilt—but her own personal growth into adulthood.

Adolescence can be defined by its transience, as one journeys from youth into adulthood. In Catching Byways Flies, Alguire commemorates this sacred developmental stage and its implications of impermanence, highlighting that home, too, can be fragile and fleeting.

Curated by Benjamin Freedman