Dreams, the subconscious and altered states are present in all aspects of Sarah Fuller's art production.These recurring themes weave themselves through her work, surfacing in photographic explorations of place, memory and collaborative narratives. Through her practice, the subconscious mind and its expression of dreams are made tangible. Dream Lab is an interdisciplinary project that was explored in collaboration with the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory at the Sacred Heart hospital in Montreal. Sarah Fuller became the subject of a lab experiment concerned with the hypnagogic, or sleep onset, stage of the sleep cycle. This particular stage of sleep was of great interest to artists like the Surrealists because it could be used as a method to harness creative imagery and the uncanny. Based on Salvador Dali's experiment "the slumber with the key", she has drawn on this technique in her own series. Dali's method consists of upright napping in which he fell asleep in a chair loosely holding a key between his thumb and forefinger. As he passed into the hypnagogic stage, he would release the key that would produce enough sound to wake him up mid-dream. For Dream Lab, two researchers observed Sarah's EEG activity from an exterior observation room, while she sat upright in a chair attempting to fall asleep. When the EEG indicated a shift from consciousness to unconscious, the researchers would allow 4-5 seconds of hypnagogic dreaming to elapse before triggering the shutter release cable, thereby tripping the shutter and flash that would act as her awakening tool. Sarah Fuller is interested not only in the resultant photographs but also the process of becoming the subject and being awakened.


Sarah Fuller was born in Winnipeg and works and lives in Banff,Alberta.She earned a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute ofArt and Design in Vancouver in 2003. Most recently, she has exhibited work at the Art Gallery of Alberta and at Latitude 53 Gallery in Edmonton as well as atThreeWalls Gallery in Chicago,Ill.Among others,her work is held in the Canada CouncilArt Bank and in theAlberta Foundation for the Arts collection. She has attended residencies in Reykjavik, Iceland and Kamloops, B.C. In the fall of 2011, she will also be in the group exhibition Flash Forward Emerging Photographers 2011 in Toronto.

The artist would like to thank the scientists at the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory for their help and contribution: Dr Tore Nielsen; Ani Popova; Christine Brochu; Isabelle Godin and Katia Wynant.

The artist would also like to aknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.


Image:
Portrait of Artist Asleep Holding a Pinhole Camera, digital inkjet print, 2008