Ned Pratt: Elevation
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Squall -
Dugout in Pouch Cove -
Big Pond -
The Farm -
St. Vincent's Beach -
Gaskiers -
Spring Run Off -
Towards Fogo -
White Fog Horn -
Aikens Wall -
Two Ponds at Dusk -
Paddens Room -
End of the Wharf, Little Port -
Aid to Navigation -
St. Philip's Beach -
Yellow Berm -
Pink Shed, Northern Peninsula -
Façade, Northern Peninsula
Christina Parker Gallery is pleased to announce Elevation, an exhibition of new and selected work by acclaimed photographer Ned Pratt. The exhibition will open with an artist reception on Friday, December 12 from 6–8pm. Music at the opening reception will be provided by Boyd Chubbs.
Ned Pratt’s photographs are defined by precise composition and a perceptive engagement with land, sea, and architectural space. By isolating what is often unnoticed, he reveals the visual significance of our everyday surroundings. His control of light, form, and edge places him at the forefront of contemporary Canadian photography, transforming sea walls, sheds, and other ordinary structures into resonant, enduring images.
Although Pratt’s practice aims to free Newfoundland of romantic cliché, his images inevitably register the pull of the landscape – the desire for escape, stillness, and solitude that often shapes our experience of place. His work foregrounds the act of looking, prompting viewers to consider how perception is shaped not by spectacle but by attention.
Pratt’s clarity of vision elevates the mundane, shifting familiar subjects into a realm of beauty and visual consequence. The verticality of his compositions underscores this idea of elevation: façades, walls and even clouds become conceptual studies in height, surface, and form. These “elevations” are rooted in common experience, reaffirming Pratt’s commitment to finding significance in the everyday.
“I constantly revisit images observing how the environment has moved, how colours have changed and how that affects my original composition,” writes Pratt. “What is new for me is the realization that an image evolves. One photograph does not end the lifespan of an observation of a place.”
Ned Pratt was born in Salmonier (NL), and currently lives in Newfoundland and Labrador. He holds a BFA in photography from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a BA in art history from Acadia University. His photography has been exhibited at the former Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, PREFIX Photo, the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival (2012) and in Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North America at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (touring from 2012–16). He holds the 2017 Large Year Award from Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador for Excellence in the Visual Arts.
In 2018, Pratt’s first touring survey exhibition, One Wave, curated by Mireille Eagan, opened at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery (September 2018 – February 2019). The exhibition was accompanied with a major publication and toured to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, NB (September 2019 – February 2020), The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (October 2020 – February 2021) and to Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia ON (March 4 – September 10, 2022).
Ned Pratt’s work has been written about in various publications, including Canadian Art, CBC Arts, Momus, and Mason Journal. His photographs are held in major public and corporate collections across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia.