Devon Knowles' Inverse and Invertible Leaners are installations that play with light, optical perception, and architectural spaces.  Knowles has arranged a series of hexagonal cones that vary in height and colour.  Each tall, narrow cone has a hexagonal footprint and maintains a hexagonal cross-section as the form rises to a pointed tip.  Inverse, an arrangement of three towering cones standing between five and eighteen feet tall, calls to mind a skyline marked by skyscrapers or monumental obelisks.  Although the hexagonal cones have a strong physical presence and evoke stable architectural structures, the forms are abstractions of a non-physical entity - light beams.  Knowles' installation is not strictly an arrangement of solid static forms; its square mirrored base adds a dynamic quality to the work.  This reflective surface conveys an image of the beams that moves and sways with the viewer's motions, and it seems to disrupt the stability of the towering monumental cones.  Structurally the mirror is a solid fixed platform, but visually the mirror is a shifting, transforming space upon which the solid hexagonal cones seem to float.  The active mirror base also compromises the architectonic structure's stability by not allowing the cone to cast the shadow that would normally emanate from its base.  Knowles disrupts the stability of the hexagonal cones even further in her Invertible Leaners.  Unlike the beams in Inverse, which rise at a perpendicular angle from the mirrored base, the beams in Invertible Leaners rise from the ground at an acute angle.  Knowles' installation also plays with the relationship between the viewer's space and the artwork's space.  The square mirrored base of Inverse is a barrier that denies the viewer from moving through the physical space between the towering cones; however, the mirror is also an invitation because it allows the viewer to enter the work by seeing themselves in the reflection and their relation to the cones.

Melissa McGrath's The Page Melts # 1 - 5 and Puddle #1 & 2 are abstract paintings that derive from text and media forms used to convey text.  The Page Melts #1 - 5 consists of five 18" x 21" stretched linens painted white.  In each painting McGrath has covered the entire surface with the exception of a few circular areas where the linen is exposed.  Each unpainted area leaves an indentation on the surface that reveals the thickness of the surrounding layers of white paint.  The size of the negative circular areas is roughly similar to the standard size of a hole punched through a sheet of loose-leaf paper.  McGrath's series of "hole-punched" linens questions the connotative meanings of a hole-punched, white page and an acrylic-on-linen painting.  A hole-punched sheet of loose-leaf paper is often used for notes or a quick sketch, and the sheet is later filed in a binder or thrown away; a linen painting, on the other hand, is traditionally used for a permanent artwork hung in a gallery or in a patron's private collection.  McGrath questions these meanings in her The Page Melts #1 - 5 by reproducing an inexpensive, ephemeral medium, the hole-punch and the hole-punched page, in a more permanent and valued medium, an acrylic-on-linen painting.  She explores a similar theme in her Puddle #1 & 2.  The series consists of two 18" x 21" stretched canvases painted with black ink.  One canvas has a glossy finish and the other canvas has a matte finish.  The black paintings are abstractions of text - the characters and forms used to convey a language.  The series allows for a number of associations and meanings.  Does the black ink represent a magnified character?  Or is it a white page that is saturated with black letters leaving no visible white space?  These abstractions of written language explore the intersections between text and painting, and ask the viewer to contemplate the definitions and meanings of these two media.

Bronwen Payerle's art practice subverts the conventions of figure drawing and cartography by re-appropriating these techniques and offering a feminist re-working of these traditionally male-dominated practices.  When Corralling an Articulation of Innuendo That One Hasn't Seen is a 7' x 9' wall-mounted, ink drawing that calls to mind a conventional map of a geographic space.  When viewed from a distance, the drawing evokes a rich terrain of mountains, valleys, lakes, and plains.  Upon closer inspection the viewer is able to see that the marks derive from the human figure.  The lines that suggest a mapped space are outlines of hands, fingers, fingernails, legs, arms, toes, feet, and torsos.  These figural drawings are records of Payerle traversing and charting the contours and spaces of her body.  This cartographic work - an artist's self-map of her body's spaces - comments on conventional maps and map-making techniques.  Payerle depicts her body through blind contour drawing, a technique where the artist draws the outline of their subject without looking at the drawing.  This intuitive process contrasts with the rational measuring systems that attempt to illustrate accurately geographical space.  Payerle's cartographic method also differs from conventional map-making techniques because her depiction of the body does not follow a rigorous adherence to scale.  For example, a life-sized depiction of her hand is illustrated next to a magnified depiction of the hairs growing under her lip.  Although Payerle's intuitive and personal process contrasts with traditional map-making's rational and formal processes, When Corralling an Articulation of Innuendo That One Hasn't Seen is not strictly a binary opposite of, say, a city roadmap or a marine chart.  Payerle's map is similar to these navigational aids in that the viewer is able to move visually and imaginatively through her depicted spaces.

Essays written by Menno Hubregtse.
(MA UVic)

installation shot of part five