Galerie Trois Points is very pleased to feature first time guest artist Natascha Niederstrass with Deconstruction of a tragedy, her first gallery solo exhibition presented from February 22 to March 29. Through a series of photographs and a video, the artist revives the myth of one of the most sordid murders of Griffintown’s history: the brutal assassination of Mary Gallagher which occurred at the end of the 19th century.

This story acquired some kind of legendary status over the years as the trial was widely publicized in the newspapers of the time. Ghost sightings have been reported around the murder scene, witnesses stating that Mary Gallagher would be seeking her head. In order to revisit this tragic event and better grasp its different components, Niederstrass proposes a series of photographs of pieces of evidence, inspired by local newspaper descriptions of the time. The artist also presents a stop motion animation, whose disturbing strangeness – or uncanniness – shows the headless ghost of Mary Gallagher wandering, searching for her head.

In this new body of work, Niederstrass obviously raises the question of the representation of women in the story. The actual event has shifted towards the urban legend to create fear and manipulate Griffintown’s women into staying at home; the emergence of the decapitated ghost, symbol of woman of questionable morals serves as both an example and a warning.

Natascha Niederstrass holds a MFA from York University in Toronto and a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. She has exhibited her work in Canada and abroad in various solo and group exhibitions. She has presented a solo exhibition at Plein sud in Longueuil who awarded her the Plein sud grant in 2005. She took part in 2009, in Confluences at the Musée régional de Rimouski and the Maison de la culture Frontenac in the project titled De l’île à la mer curated by Bernard Lamarche. In 2010, she participated in the Off Manif d’Art 5 in Québec entitled Accident. She will be part of the upcoming programming at Occurrence – Espace d’art et d’essai contemporains in the spring of 2014.

Press release

Exhibition Press