It's 1951, and a fight has broken out at the hockey game. Two men grapple amid the scattered popcorn; a hand tries to yank one fighter away, while onlookers watch. There's a fascinated woman watching, eyes beady as her pearls, but the rest of the onlookers are men, and the snacks, souvenir programmes and judicious distance they maintain make it seem as if the fight is the sporting event they've come to watch.
Our viewpoint, looming above, is distant too – more so than it first appears. Canadian Stan Douglas didn't take this Weegee-ish picture in 1951 but set it up in 2010. We wrestle with reality while he steps back a little and, perhaps, munches on a mid-game snack.
All the images in this superb exhibition are sly jokes of this sort, some subtler than others. 'Passe-Tête, 1946', in which an Asian man plays cowboy in a fairground-style painted scenario, is fairly obvious, but the back of a woman's head, supposedly circa 1948, is deeply disconcerting. Her hair is perfect – but it's frozen, gleaming, horrible. Her expensive fur just plays up the mottling on her back.
Photography, for Douglas, really is about exposure. His camera appears to be a shiny lacquering device which, rather than politely hiding the fact, celebrates its artificiality. There is no image here that is unbeautiful, with the possible exception of 'Demobilization Suit, 1945': the acrylic paint on the photograph is unworthy. And there isn't one that doesn't leave the viewer deeply uncomfortable. Something's not quite right, but what? It takes a lot of staring to work out why the glitter – of rings, jewels, hair lacquer or knife blades – in these matte monochromes provokes such nervousness. Eventually, you realise: it shines like sweat on a con-man's skin.