artist talk at Stan Hagan Theatre Tuesday, February 10
artist talk with adjunct performance events starting at noon Saturday, February 14, 1:15 pm
public performances/interactions Fridays from 11am to 1pm, January 30, February 6, 13, 20, 27 and March 6
Kelly Gough’s and Joyce Lindemulder’s works each incorporate a kind of dissection. A way to ask questions about “the way things are and how to be.” Kelly considers female domestic labour and the way that work is related to various metals. Her pieces isolate those metals and reconfigure them in a way that comments on the woman’s bodily relationship to them. Through the act of cutting and hole-punching Joyce also works to decontextualize; in this case, skin from any other association one might have with the way “races” are constructed. When regarded on their own, the skin tones are no longer judged in relation to the rest of the model’s features. The collage pieces likewise separate and reconfigure otherwise disparate clippings from magazines and books, creating new meaning from the materials used. Through the process of stripping wire, cords, cutting copper, and distending steel cable Kelly’s works propose a kind of violent action. This is also evident in Joyce’s pieces through the process of hole punching skin samples from the bodies of Vogue models. However, both Joyce and Kelly arrive at different visual destinations. Literal and conceptual layers emerge in the various dimensions, materiality and methodology represented in each work.
The artist’s intention through this joint project is not to answer questions, but to ask them. Their hope is that the works in The Way Things Are & How To Be, created by two women artists, contains within it the energy to generate change through dialogue between the artists, the works, the gallery, and with the audience.
KELLY GOUGH
Kelly Gough was diagnosed with PTSD in 2005 and was released from the Canadian Armed forces after twenty-two years of service. Largely working with sculptural and installation practices, Gough interrogates and challenges her experiences and diagnoses concerning trauma. Using trauma as both a set of experiences and an aesthetic framework, Gough is fascinated with the repetition of seemingly ordinary objects and metals such as copper, brass and aluminum. Beginning with the sensory, obsessively deconstructing and reconstructing, Gough’s sculptural installations transform fragmented experiences and materials into ethereal landscapes.
JOYCE LINDEMULDER
Joyce Lindemulder’s practice focusses on ideological Whiteness, as well as the theories that surround, intersect, and overlap it. She explains:
I explore difference and gender in the context of life as a female who is racially coded as White. This questioning occurs within the contention that identity constructions are fluid and malleable.
I look for ways to explore a given idea and find the most appropriate method for conveying that concept whether it is animation, drawing, painting, or creating a three dimensional object. It is my hope that interrogating various materials, methods, and methodologies in a visual practice will produce a space/place that permits thinking and dialogue.
Joyce lives and works in an enclave of Whiteness on the western edge of Canada.
