Leah Oates has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for graduate study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.
In 2019 Oates had work shown in the REVEAL Art Fair in Saratoga Springs, NY with Susan Eley Fine Art and in Toronto 2019 a solo show at Black Cat Artspace and group shows at the Gladstone Hotel as part of Grow Op 2019, Propeller Gallery, Xpose 2019 at the Papermill Gallery, Arta Gallery, Neilson Park Creative Centre, Connections Gallery, and the 2019 SNAP Photography Auction at the Arcadian Court. Oates has a solo show in spring 2020 at Wychwood Barns Community Gallery in Toronto.
In 2018-2019 Oates had press in Art Toronto, Junto, Magazine 43, Underexposed, Ruminate, Mud Season Review, dArt, Tulane Review, The Six Hundred, Blue Mesa Review, Friends of the Artist, GASHER, Flumes, and 805 Lit + Art.
Oates has had solo shows at Susan Eley Fine Art, The MTA Lightbox Project at 42nd Street, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, The Center for Book Arts, Henry Street Settlement, and A Taste of Art Gallery; locally at Tomasulo Gallery in New Jersey, Real Art Ways in Connecticut, Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill, Long Island, and the Sol Mednick Gallery at the Philadelphia University of the Arts. Oates has had solo shows nationally at Anchor Graphics, Artemisia Gallery and Woman Made Gallery in Chicago and internationally at Galerie Joella in Turku, Finland.
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Artist Statement:
"The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions, and a continual human imprint. In everyone and in everything there are daily changes, and this series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space.
Humans leave traces and artifacts of our consciousness everywhere in our environment. Contradictory realities can be found coexisting wherever we
look. They’re in what we choose to think, what we choose to believe, and how we choose to act. And they can be found in what we choose to observe.
When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses.
Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral. Yet in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience. We are always living in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately.
Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence."
