top of page

Perpetual Navigation

Deer Lake Residency Exhibition

 

Shadbolt Centre for the Arts

Burnaby BC, Canada

2023

Deer Lake Residency Period

August 6 - September 15, 2022

 

 

Perpetual Navigation re-envisions traditional models of ceramics, materials and techniques, calling attention to the malleability of structures, unstable surfaces and adaptability though transition.

I have been thinking about the climate crisis in relation to why I am attracted to discarded objects that show the measure of time. Trajectories of change and the allure of transience inform many of the assemblages and constructions, making connections between artistic process, impermanence and transition.

 

Traces within spaces

Past leftovers of moments with unfixed futures

Fleeting vestiges of time

Transient moments of materiality

Mundane anchors of the everyday

Measured persistence

Unseen architectures

Trajectories of change

Reading between the lines

Liminal landscapes

Filling the void

Adapting to the new

At the edge of disappearance

A rediscovery of spaces

Caught between states of transition

Perpetual Navigation

NO  WHERE

NOW  HERE

 

Residency Exhibition XPO

ARE, Enschede Netherlands

2018

ARE Residency Period

Jan 1 - March 31, 2018

 

liminal

ˈlɪmɪn(ə)l/

adjective

1. 
relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.




2. 
occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

3. liminal symbols of passage and transformation; doors, ladders, crossings, bridges, pallets.

 

 

Nowhere Now Here explores current issues of globalization and climate change through the lens of the liminal. Our cultural landscapes have been increasingly crisscrossed and blurred through shifting borders and boundaries, directly impacting the ways in which we all cohabitate with one another. Materials, images and objects  visually demonstrate transition and transformation - the visible and the invisible – the seen and unseen. In the exhibition the notion of 'space' and 'place' occurs in conjunction with ideas of the 'temporary' and 'permanent' creating a play between the real and the unreal - the Nowhere and the Now Here.

NO  WHERE

NOW  HERE

 

Kimoto Gallery

Vancouver BC Canada

2018

Throughout this body of work, a feeling of absence and presence is reflected in voids and volumes visually demonstrating transition and transformation, the visible and the invisible, the seen and unseen.

 

Filling the void, adapting to the new, at the edge of disappearance, a rediscovery of spaces, suspended between states of perpetual navigation, Nowhere Now Here.

The Day Job

 

(First excerpt, 2016)

Single channel video

06:56 min

2003 - Ongoing

The Day Job started in 2003, this is the first excerpt from hundreds of hours of footage over the years. What started out as a day job has now become part of my routine, hiding art in hard to find places. To notice the unnoticeable, to look where no one does, like a quasi-archeological expedition of absurdity and truth, quixotic adventures of surprise and play. Remember, whatever you are looking at is just the surface layer. Peel it like an onion and see what you can find.

Click Link to Vimeo page

Notes - Self Portrait

 

Standard loose leaf paper, pen, pencil, ink,various media and found bits, stamps, tape, stickers, correction pen, found detritus

11" x 8.5"  each page (28cm x 21.5cm)

2001 - Ongoing

 

I have carried a piece of paper and pen on my person everyday without exception since the summer of 2001. I collect and doodle and record until the paper is full on both sides. Then I date the end and start of a new paper which I fold in half 3 times. 

Self Portrait

 

All of my parking tickets and collection letters, sewn into an empty wallet, thread

3.5” x 12.5” x 1”   (8.9cm x 31.8cm x 2.5cm)

2012

Nomadic Recoils 

 

Residency Exhibition

Äkkigalleria, Jyväskylä Finland

2010

 

Residency Period

August 20 - September 2, 2010 

 

Most of the material for this residency was found and salvaged from the surrounding landscape in the streets, old abandoned houses, farms and barns and then drawn on, combined with or Re-coiled. This was a strategy to regard the disregarded, challenging common perceptions of visual representation.

Hockey Night in Canada

 

Once Upon A Pond... pond hockey and global warming

Esplanade Art Gallery, Medicine Hat AB Canada Curated by Linda Sawchyn

2009

 

Also exhibited at Vancouver ArtWalk

during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver BC Canada, 2010

Project Flyleaf

 

Elliott Louis Gallery, Vancouver BC Canada

2006

 

fly’leaf” n. 1, a blank leaf at the beginning or end of a book.  2, flyleaves often carry pen trials and inscriptions concerning provenance.  3, used for structural reinforcement to protect the text in the event of worming or damage to the binding.

 

Each work in this series started with a flyleaf and the marks that happened to live on it. The flyleaf is left to the unpredictable course and nature of the books next owner.  Things that were written may become crossed out, or added onto.  A dialogue of spontaneous and uncertain mark making begins over the course of a books life. Flyleaves ephemeral yet silent qualities draw on my obsession with opposites that simultaneously co-exist in perfect harmony.  

Where I lay my head is home

 

Site specific lay-downs around Earth

2006 − Ongoing

 

Click Link to view the entire series

 

This project started out in 2006 as a reaction and counter balance to the cliché “tourist photo” which has now become a cultural phenomenon known as the “Selfie”. Laying down on the ground in various locations around Earth reflects my ongoing curiosity with self-presentation in public and private spaces and the document of the here and now. There is a recurrent insistence to document the present while remembering the past, to keep a connection to tradition and a conservation of our social and cultural relationships to the landscape around us. This is how I remember.

 

(un)common (playing)ground

 

Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna BC Canada Curated by Linda Sawchyn

2004

 

Injecting the unusual into the familiar by turning sports objects inside out.

 

(un)common (playing)ground 1, a (play)ground without rules. 2, taking something common and making it (un)common. 3, unity of opposites. 4, (with)out rules.

Self Portrait - Mailed Experiments

 

Variable Media and Dimensions

2004 - 2007

 

Birdhouse Intervention

 

I saw an unfinished birdhouse on my neighbours firewood pile. So I stole it and finished what I thought was the intended design. 5 months later I put it back on the firewood pile.  The hole drilled on the front measures the correct diameter for a sparrow.

 

January - June 2002

Performance
 
Site Specific Interventions
 
Collaborations
 

Studies in Amplification

 

Amplified objects - (ladder, axe, tennis racket, tank, ice skates, fly, bridge), guitar pick-ups, piezo mics, cello and violin pick-ups, RP-50 effect pedals, mini amplifiers, 1/4 jacks, batteries, tape, leather, thread, fabric

Variable Dimensions

1999 - Ongoing

 

Link

Self Portrait                                                             



Oil pastel, pencil, ink, graphite, crayon, pen, thread, white-out, found detritus paper, tape, various glue, blood, stitches, hair, plastic, fabric, linseed oil, correction pen, flyleaf pages

7" x 4.5" each (approx.)  (17.8cm x 11.4cm)

1999 - Ongoing



I make two or three more every year, and will continue until my death.