May 8–31, 2025
MA is a meditation on space, presence, and form. Drawing on the Japanese concept of Ma; the pause and space between form. This series captures dancers as they inhabit their bodies; instruments finely tuned to express the inexpressible. What we see in these images is a fleeting moment in time.
An embodiment of beauty, discipline, and emotion. Through abstraction and gesture, the photographs become traces of this deeply inhabited, transient experience.
“The Energy Of Ascension” from the MA series: Edition 3 of 5.
Laura Jane Petelko
Photo by Dean Holmes
Laura Jane Petelko is a distinguished photographer celebrated for her painterly approach, blending abstraction with emotional depth. Over the last 20 years, now back in her native Toronto, she has become known for her emotive and intimate subject matter, structured within ongoing series that challenge photography’s traditional relationship with information, resolution, and detail. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at major institutions like Christie’s, where it was featured in the preview of The Eye of the Collector, as well as leading art fairs such as Photo London and the London Art Fair, where she continues to attract global attention.
Her Endless Gone series (2019–present) emerged from a deeply personal experience —after facing the prognosis of impending blindness, she began using in-camera abstraction to dissolve the specifics of landscapes, subverting photography’s typical emphasis on clarity. In Ma (2020), created during the pandemic, she collaborated with dancers from the National Ballet of Canada—stripped of their usual stage—to explore movement and transcendence beyond the limitations of that moment in time.
Her ongoing practice remains rooted in a sense of emotional sincerity, with each series offering a poetic meditation on presence, transformation, and the ephemeral nature of experience.