22 January—6 March 2010

Days of the Eclipse

Front Gallery

“In the bleak mid-winter frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone”
Christina Rossetti, 1872

Two concurrent exhibitions at Mercer Union pay tribute to the wintry theme of the waning of light. With the winter equinox now passed, the cycle reverses: we are gaining light by the second. An eclipse, like the equinox, is a switch point in time – the exact moment when light and dark meet in full cancellation. An eclipse delineates and portends. It is a momentous occasion yet its after-effect may be bleak: the blindness that comes from the sleep of reason or the obscurity we associate with shadows. Its title borrowed from Alexander Sokurov’s dreary yet dreamy film Days of the Eclipse, the exhibition assembles a topographic map of the state of eclipse, providing a detailed representation of both its cultural and natural attributes.

Information

Group Exhibition
Gary Beydler, Kristan Horton, Marie Jager, Euan Macdonald, Will Rogan and Elizabeth Zvonar

Curated by Sarah Robayo Sheridan