Trigger

This exhibition, curated by Allyson Clay, offers an opportunity for the Vancouver audience to see a group show of multimedia and installation work by Katherine Knight of Vancouver, Sandra Meigs of Toronto, and Colette Urban of Victoria. Although the work of each of these artists is unique and different, they share a common approach to art-making, drawing from a wide range of media, and designing their works for specific sites.

Katherine Knight is showing a sculptural installation called Marguerite incorporating a continuous audio tape which projects the artist's voice reading a long poem, of the same name, written in 1981. This work is based on the true life story of Canada’s first uncloistered nun, Marguerite Bourgeouys, who, writes Knight, "attempts much, accomplishes some, dies, is largely forgotten and is now remembered."

Sandra Meigs work, Angel Eyes (self-portrait), is a painting in polyester resin on six panels of four by eight foot plexiglass. These unsophisticated or cartoon-like images recall childhood experiences of the “real" equaling the “imaginary" and all existing on a giant movie-screen scale. This is also a humorous and critical look at everyday imagery represented as monumental or museum-size.

Colette Urban is showing costumes and other ingredients from two past performances, I Feel Faint and Every Fly has a Shadow, as well as presenting a new performance, Blind Spot, on opening night. "Colette Urban," Ian Wallace has written, "transfigures objects and experiences into ciphers for the recognition of both inspiration and emptiness, yet which also evoke the faint echo of truth, an evasive truth which seems so remote from the quotidian world of the streets."

In general, these three artists' sensual use of materials, their use of the elements of theatricality and kitsch, and their discreet sensibility for the ironic and comic, trigger another level of involvement in the critical discourses of feminism and modernism.

Guest curated by Allyson Clay