Permutations: The Raw and The Soft
“Permutations: The Raw and the Soft” features the fabulous work of my dear friend Jody MacDonald. Also showing is Stephen Laidlaw who I’ll discuss briefly as well. The exhibition runs until Aug 26 at the Nanaimo Art Gallery. Highly recommended if you’re in the area.
Jody’s work is a series of soft sculpture figures in mixed media. Each figure is about 18-24 inches long and uses variations of the artist’s face. There are some recurring themes: targets, arrows and other sources of physical pain, meticulously crafted clothing and accessories.
Here are some of my favourites. Click the photos for larger views.
Reductum ad Absurdum - Four shirts read, from largest to smallest: “Beware of God”, “Be of God”, “Be God”, and “God”. I like that the final piece is just the shirt - I think Naomi Klein would approve.
Jurassic Measures is one I think many of us can relate to. You know, when something in you just snaps and you let out the beast!
Tourist Attraction (detail) - you have to look, don’t you? …And buy the T-Shirt of course.
Fishing For Compliments (detail) - There were three similar figures in this one, hanging together from hooks as if in a fishmonger’s shop. Beautiful, compelling, and sad all at once.
Stephen Laidlaw’s paintings are almost sculptural due to the thickness of the paint. The imagery is often full of reproductive body parts and other strong symbols. The colours are much better live than in photographs. I can’t really say a lot more than that because a) I’m not so into painting as I am other media and b) I really spent more time looking at Jody’s work.
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Posted: July 31st, 2006 under Art.
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