Ghostwriter #2: a Project Room Series curated by Mary Anne Barkhouse featuring John Abrams, Faye Heavyshield, and Veronica Verkeley November 7 - December 21, 1996 Mercer Union is pleased to present Ghostwriter #2, the second in a series of five project room exhibitions which posit artmaking and writing as interlocked processes. Each exhibition is a collaborative project formed by the fusion of the Ghostwriter/curator and the artist(s) he/she chooses to work with. Each Ghostwriter was selected based on their own visual and written productions, which reflect a diversity of disciplines and communities. "...There is evidence that large mammals happen to have the same percetual mechanisms as we do and fall for symmetry as much as do humans. Symmetry, a proxy for health, is a vital attribute of what we consider beauty, be it symmetry in shape or symmetry in motion or symmetry in sound." Dr. Valerius Geist, Elk Country In Ghostwriter #2, Mary Anne Barkhouse explores the different strategies employed in cultural survival. Secular origins of colonial art traditions would rather not acknowledge the relevance of societal positions in relation to the native or the bestial. The incorporation of one or the other as a display of communal vitality and individual growth is an integral part of the work of this grouping of artists. Utilizing the formal properties of their varied materials they articulate signs inherent in gesture, colour and form that speak for the continued renegotiation of culture. Mary Anne Barkhouse is a Toronto artist who has received awards from the Canadian Native Arts Foundation and whose work has been exhibited in Art of the First Nations in Brantford, Ontario and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, and featured in such publications as Matriart and Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the making of the Modern Indian Movement.