EXHIBITIONS
Andrew Latreille: Crossover Exhibition
Gallery 881 is pleased to present Crossover, a solo exhibition of new photographic work by Canadian-Australian artist Andrew Latreille. The show features large-scale prints, a physical installation, and an audiovisual display from his latest body of work. This installation challenges our historical perception of forest fires by removing the blaze from its expected context. Instead of chaos and heat, Latreille captures the haunting beauty of post-burn landscapes under the reflected light of a subzero winter full moon. The result is a quiet yet powerful visual essay on climate, perception, and transformation.
GALLERY 881
881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
gallery881.com
@gallery881_
CROSSOVER
by Andrew Latreille
Exhibition
June 11 - July 10, 2025
Opening Reception
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 from 5 - 8pm
Artist Talk
Saturday, June 21, 2025 from 2 - 3pm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
“Day turns to night, and night becomes day, smoke obscures the beating sun’s rays, the fire’s intensity overpowers the moon’s cool soft light.”
This point, known amongst fire professionals as Crossover, describes a threshold where perception and time are destabilized.
In this project, Latreille purposefully removes the forest fire from its expected seasonal and emotional context, placing it instead in the stillness of a subzero, moonlit winter. By relocating the subject in both time and light, Crossover creates a perceptual and temporal shift—where day could be night, perhaps night is day.
As Edward Struzik outlines in his book Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire, our cultural response to wildfire—from the 19th through 21st centuries—has been shaped by fear, leading us to treat fire solely as an enemy. This mindset, reinforced by sensational media coverage, overlooks fire’s ecological role and perpetuates a cycle of avoidance rather than adaptation.
Born in Australia and now living in British Columbia, Latreille’s relationship with fire is deeply personal. From childhood memories of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires to the dense smoke of recent Canadian summers, fire has always loomed as a destructive force. Perhaps though, that is what we’ve been taught. Crossover acknowledges the immature relationship settlers have with fire on the land, which has led to an unhealthy accumulation of fuel and an increase in catastrophic burns. This stands in direct contrast to the mature relationship held by Indigenous peoples, whose long understanding of fire as a vital ecological process continues to inform sustainable land stewardship.
Photographed between November 2021 and March 2023, Crossover captures the remains of two remote British Columbian burn sites from the 2021 fire season—landscapes far from human settlement. Here the fires unfold quietly and largely unnoticed, eclipsed in media coverage by fires deemed more urgent—those threatening homes and infrastructure. Perhaps the only report on their scale is the density of smoke that drifts across our skies. Under the cool, diffuse light of the full moon, the burned forest reveals itself in a new clarity, carbon-coated trees casting elongated shadows across the snow. These once-dense woodlands, known for their enclosed softness and layered biodiversity, become transparent. The topography is exposed, seemingly infinite. Transformed by light, temperature, and time into a space of quiet reflection and sublime potential.
Latreille’s practice is rooted in a search for liminal moments, those transitional spaces where change occurs, often imperceptibly. He is drawn to environments shaped by both human intervention and natural forces, creating images not of what is physically present, but of what his feelings witness. In this series, the landscape becomes a space of awe; anxiety, beauty, and ultimately, hope.
The fires Latreille photographed burned far beyond populated areas—massive, remote events that most people only glimpse through drifting smoke. By entering those isolated spaces long after the flames had passed, out of season, and under full moonlight—he invites viewers to consider what often remains unseen. These are not images of catastrophe, but of continuity. Not endings, but thresholds. Through scale, texture, and light, Latreille aims to reconnect us to our transforming environment and suggest that even in devastation, beauty remains possible.
This project does not capture a single moment in time, but rather a continuum—linking past, present, and potential future. It’s about the space between destruction and regeneration, and the sublime experience of choosing to be still within it.
BIOGRAPHY
Andrew Latreille is an Australian-born, Vancouver-based visual artist whose photographic practice investigates the relationships between time, environment, and human impact. With a background in architecture and a deep commitment to long-term visual inquiry,Latreille’s practice moves beyond conventional documentation to explore perceptual shifts and liminal spaces—those transitional moments where he can reveal the unexpected or the emotion of a place.His most recent series, titled Crossover, positions forest fire not as an apocalyptic force but as a necessary actor within ecological cycles. Created under subzero full-moon conditions between 2021and 2023, the series documents the haunting aftermath of British Columbia’s 2021 fire season. Byisolating thesescorched landscapes in winter, Latreille encourages viewers to reconsider wildfire asboth destructive and sublime—offering hope within devastation and light within shadow. Theimagesexplores “Crossover,” a term used by fire professionals to describe the moment when conditions shift and fire becomes uncontrollable. In Latreille’s hands, it becomes a metaphor for emotional and environmental transformation.
His fascination with these threshold moments—what he calls harnessing liminal space—stems in part from growing up in a creative family in Melbourne and later deepened through his architectural studies at the University of Melbourne and his subsequent photographic career in Canada. His architectural thesis examined the poetic relationship between photographic film grain and the speed of wine fermentation, signaling an early interest in how process, material, and time intersects.In 2018, Latreille exhibited at the Venice Biennale’sTime Space Existence exhibition, showcasing hisThen and Now series. In this series, he explored transitional moments of architecture under construction, juxtaposing these with smaller images of the finished project. This international presentation emphasised his approach to photography of looking beyond the immediate to reveal deeper cultural and societal narratives.
Latreille’s practice has been recognized by the Lucie Awards, Black & White Spider Awards, and the Architecture Photography Masterprize, and is regularly featured in national and international exhibitions. He is a dedicated community contributor, serving as a National Board Member and Vancouver Chapter President of the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators (CAPIC),and as an ambassador for Phase One and Arca Swiss Cameras.He lives and works in Vancouver on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, raising two sons with his wife and continually seeking meaning in the evolving relationships between humans and the land they inhabit
