Coming Forth by Day Deborah Thompson at Gallery Gachet
Opening reception: Fri March 5, 7 – 10pm with performance by Bree Switzer at 8pm | Artist Talk & Community Dress Building Workshop: Sat March 6, 4 – 6pm
(In celebration of International Women’s Day, www.internationalwomensday.com)
Stages of death, separation, and renewal are core themes uniting Deb Thompson’s three bodies of work opening at Gallery Gachet on March 5th.
Coming Forth By Day, a title taken from her research into Egyptian mythology and specifically the Egyptian Book of the Dead which captured her curatorial attention in a project called, SALT: the distillation of matter, which included the work of two Vancouver artists, Haruko Okano and Nicole Dextras. The installation consists of four stations which are intended to be seen as various stages of transformation as we journey through the underworld. The construction of a dress form – a metaphor for the body – is central to the installation. Thompson’s overt laborious and repetitive process of the stitching of hand sized pieces of bees waxed encased rice paper into life sized garments in what she refers to as, re-membering the body both somatically and psychologically echoes the journey of Isis in the throws of her longing for the dismembered body of Osiris. This longing Thompson says, is something all humans share and desire speaks to this need for uniting what has been separated.
Supplementing the dresses is her altar piece sculpture, Memorables. This piece is veiled and upon opening reveals the horizontal body of a dead woman covered in burrs. Thompson created this piece as part of a community art project through the Oxygen Art Centre which paired artists with social agencies. Thompson worked with ANKORS the region AIDS service agency to create an altar commentating the difficult pain of loss and grief as a result of the death of a loved one from AIDS. Her choice of burrs to cover that body act as a metaphor for the AIDS virus and for the stigmas associated with the virus.
The third and final part of her Gachet exhibit consists of paintings selected from her series, The Maternal Body: The Paradox of Desire, which first began when Thompson found a dead mother squirrel on the road one day while out walking. She picked her up to move her off the road and felt such an urgency towards her that she took her home to paint her. This work holds personal meaning for her about her relationship to the maternal as well as bringing awareness to our culture’s relationship to the feminine and specifically the maternal aspect of the feminine. Our cultural rejection of the feminine in its deepest form is the tension and pathos of this work. The paradox of this rejection is the desire for the maternal matrix which supports and brings forth life.
Thompson grew up in Toronto where she split her time between the city and the northern woods. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1984 and since then has lived in various locations throughout the west including Missoula, Montana where she did her M.F.A. in painting. She now makes her home in Nelson, B.C where she has her studio, works as a curator and is raising her daughter. Her paintings have shown in solo shows around the interior, but this is the first time her sculptural installation work will be shown in Vancouver.
Building a Community Dress
This is a great opportunity for people to contribute to the building of a community dress. For the duration of the exhibit a dress station will be present, for people in the local community to stitch another piece onto a communal dress. Come to the artist talk and dress building workshop on Saturday March 6th and learn the intricate art of stitching hide like beeswax encased rice paper.
The creation of the community dress can be seen both as a healing ritual, and a meditation on embodiment. Reflecting on the project Coming Forth by Day as a recognition of the stages of transformation or change necessary for healing, the journey that is an integral part of growth for both the individual and community. The tactile aspect of the process, the holding of natural materials and the sewing of pieces together act as a binding and bridging metaphor for making what is separate whole. That this separateness is the root of the longing we all experience that moves us continually towards wholeness or union. And in acknowledging and working with this longing we can foster compassion for one another and ourselves. This process of physical remembering is an act of giving voice to the physical suffering of the Missing Women in Vancouver whose lives were taken. And to all women (and sentient beings) who are suffering and wish to move towards an integrated wholeness and healing. The image of the dress is a symbol of multiple meanings, that of the feminine with in all of us, that of the female body from which we were all born, that of our own bodies and that of the body of the earth in which we are interdependent of.
Do not miss this invitation to play a hand in creating this symbol of beauty, loss and renewal! The dress will be paraded in next year’s Women’s Memorial March on Feb 14th. This is also an event to celebrate International Women’s Day 2010 on March 8th.
Media Contact: Lara Fitzgerald, Programming Director, programming@gachet.org
Lara Fitzgerald
Programming Director
Gallery Gachet
88, East Cordova Street
t: 604 687 2468
f: 604 687 1196
programming@gachet.org
www.gachet.org
© 2010 ArtConverge (ISSN 1918-9273)
Tags: gallery gachet