Scott Treleaven

Confronting the peripheral reality of living on the fringes of conventional social norms, has been the leading narrative thread of Scott Treleaven's work. His flexible combinations of video, text and sound media, are the template from which he has also gradually developed his hauntingly moving photographs collages and films. Treleaven has never shied away from cross examining his own sexual orientation through his art. Born in 1972 in Toronto Canada, he was a founder and pioneer of the city's 'queercore' underground scene in the mid 1980s, a cultural and artistic movement which explored alternative identity politics and sexual orientations. These themes have remained essential features of Treleaven's work throughout his career, as he has steadily developed thematics of nonconformist eroticism, fetishism, heathenry and underground punk music over the years. He attempts to objectively assess the political and social impact of these collective environments, by presenting their captivating and idealist aspects to the viewer. The influence of independent film making and fanzine culture which Treleaven helped to create and contributed to in his twenties, still permeates the fabric of his paintings and drawings. Through photographic collages and prints, both carefully segmented and reassembled, he depicts the multifaceted arrangements of nature, space and colour. His images articulate his search for a self-determined existence and his continued impertinence, before the pillars of social convention and repression. (Artist website)