The Way Things Are & How to Be – E-Program / Printed Matter

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.