ANNE DEVITT & JOHN MCCARTNEY
Sunday February 26th 2017 to Sunday April 2nd 2017
over under in
New work by Anne Devitt & John McCartney
Opening weekend March 4 & 5, 2017. Artists will be present during open hours
Reception and Artist Talk Saturday March 18 4-6pm
ARTiculations is pleased to present the work of Anne Devitt and John McCartney for the second time in the Earl Selkirk Gallery. This show is titled over under in. Frequent collaborators, Devitt and McCartney both work with paper but in very different ways. This exhibition features two new projects Horizon Lines (Devitt) and In (McCartney). Inspired by The Earl Selkirk Gallery and its unique exhibition space, the two installations examine relationships between materials, process and the maker/viewer experience.
WINDOW VITRINE
ANNE DEVITT
Horizon Lines
Woven wood cut print on paper
14’x7′
2016
Can a place hold us together?
Devitt’s new piece, Horizon Lines, is a large scale woven paper structure that is hand printed, cut and woven back together. The weft strands could be thought of as horizon lines that accumulate over time forming a landscape. The strands weave through each person connecting them to each other and to the place. It is for her a metaphor for our lives and the places in our memories.
Devitt’s process begins with woodcut prints depicting one or two figures surrounded by gouges or marks as individual as a fingerprint. She thinks of these gouges as marks left behind by events, experiences or memories. She then cuts these images up and weaves the pieces together to create random patterns that speak to the complexity and unpredictability of life. The work is about the desire to achieve a feeling of serenity and Devitt poses the question: Do people hold everything around them in place or is it their surroundings that hold them in place?
INTERIOR GALLERY
JOHN MCCARTNEY
In
Mixed Media Paper Installation
2017
An immersive drawing experience
The interior gallery holds McCartney’s drawing installation titled In. It is comprised of 3 large scale drawings and that includes additional scraps and fragments of other drawings. As you step inside the gallery, the viewer is immediately enveloped by drawing on all sides. Only two or three people can occupy the space at any given time, which can be claustrophobic and dark. Drawing is a very individual activity often viewed as an artist’s thought process. There is a reflection between the shapes that are rendered in the 2d picture plane and the forms created by the 3d paper sculpture. The gallery installations allows the viewer to walk-in and journey through the frame (gallery) into the drawing (installation) changing the way the drawing is experienced.
McCartney has been producing large format drawings on paper since 2002 using many media such as ink, pastels, graphite, crayon, etc. He draws with no or very little preconception about what he wants to see. He likes the surprises he gets and feels that he often learns something by the resulting image and is technically challenged by being open to working in this way. He has felt the need to make some really large drawings that use many sheets of paper. The Earl Selkirk gallery’s small size is a perfect space to experiment with this concept.
