Simon Glass, The Ten Commandments/Prohibited Weapons (2005)

The Ten Commandments/Prohibited Weapons is a suite of ten giclee prints, 40” x 20”, embellished with gold leaf that can be viewed as contemporary illuminated Hebrew manuscripts. They show the full Hebrew text of the Ten Commandments combined with photographic imagery showing genuine prohibited weapons, pistols, and knives. These works meditate on both the possibility and impossibility of justice and the violence of the law. Simon Glass says the following of his new work: “A given idiom will not always, or perhaps ever, convey the same thing to two individuals and so, both the possibility and the impossibility of justice are mitigated because there can be no justice without law yet no law will always be just.”

Simon Glass graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1983. His work is primarily photography and digital media and combines photographic imagery with Biblical, liturgical and mystical Hebrew texts. Over the course of the last 15 years, such works have addressed issues related to the Holocaust, personal issues of loss and anthropomorphic ideas of God. His work has been exhibited widely across Canada and internationally. Simon teaches in the Art and Art History Program of the University of Toronto at Mississauga/Sheridan College and at the Ontario College of Art and Design. He is a founding member of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and is the recipient of numerous awards from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Both the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council have generously supported his new body of work.

With the generous support of...