AUGUST 3 - SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

SAP COLLECTOR

When making the work for this show I thought about the mystery of gifts in their packages, arrangements of figures like toys in their boxes. Dreaming about the future & plucking pieces from the past. In my work, some things & figures should seem fixed, others are alive & breathing. A ribbon may be sentient. Not with stunning realism but with the seed planted inside. Part that you remembered, part that you imagined. For when you want to be far away.

THE MUDDLE 

My inspiration for this show is sourced from mythology, the natural world, and the significance of narrative. I grew up near wetlands, and I was always drawn to this region of the "inbetween", with it's misty, otherworldly aura. It most closely resembled the grecian underworld and it's various rivers, and so, as I explored I began reading the land through a mythological lens. Every creature I encountered fell into my narrative - the lone coyote that crossed my path one day became an ancient being, the yearly gathering of nesting herons became the three Fates, and every unique log or tree formation seemed to point to some source of divination.

The pieces in this show are my attempts to illustrate how enchanting it was to be in nature as a child, and how the symbols and archetypes I encountered in literature helped give form to the ideas and experiences I had to grapple with growing up. The title of this show, The Muddle, is actually a reference to one of my favourite novels, "A Room with a View" by E.M. Forster. The original excerpt reads, "there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided." Collectively, these works are an ode to "The Muddle", that terrifying realm we fall into in times of  uncertainty, and where story becomes a tool for navigation.