Penelope Stewart

25 June 1998 - 1 August 1998
Opening Reception 25 June 1998 8pm

Project Room:

Phalaene, Spidersense #6

In Penelope Stewart’s site-sensitive installation for The House Project (1994), the architecture played an integral role as the armature for the work. The careful tailoring of the room to organza articulated and made visible that body, that skin, that invisible history latent within that space, the House; the site of history’s most intricate invasions making evident the disturbance of symmetry between the private and public sphere. This installation was the first in what has become a series Performance in the Present, 1996, completed at Synagogue Na Palmovce, Prague, Republic of Czech and her most recent solo exhibition breath, 1997, at Niagara Artists’ Company, St. Catharines, Ontario of site works which address not only a response to the physicality of the site but also notions of space/time/art/architecture/the body and sexuality. Within this series Stewart incorporated photographs, video stills, projections and organza (a material characterized by its translucency, fragility and vulnerability to environmental change) to accentuate spatial and temporal considerations, creating a complex psychological space in which the viewer necessarily becomes complicit through entry into the work.

Phalaene, the work created for Mercer Union’s Spidersense #6, is informed by Stewart’s previous work utilizing many of the same interventions. The title and the work refer to the moth, the original symbol of the soul, and is referenced by the layered mythologies and experiences associated with this insect.

Penelope Stewart has continued to participate in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally since 1990. Most recently, her work was included in The Real Mackay (1998), a group exhibition of site works at the Mackay Mill, Bowmanville, Ontario. Other site exhibitions include The House Project (1994), Toronto, and breath (1997), at the Niagara Artists’ Company, St. Catherines.

jwcurry

Kamloops Test Target, in the brochure

jwcurry contributes the final installation of visual poetry with his piece Kamloops Test Target(from TRAC(K)INGS).

jwcurry is an Ottawa-based concrete poet who has had numerous publications and projects produced and is a member of the Canadian Small Change Association.