Past Exhibitions
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 1995 - 2000
mproper Perspectives (detail) 2000
Courtesy of Catriona Jefferies Gallery
ntitled II, self portrait
(previously swallowed objects) 1995-97
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery
Allyson Clay: Imaginary Standard Distance*
Curator: Karen Henry
This exhibition is a mid-career retrospective of the work of Vancouver-based artist Allyson Clay. It is texturally rich and includes artworks ranging from painting to video. Clay's work is both seductive and challenging, negotiating the margins between curiosity and voyeurism that is currently receiving widespread attention in popular culture.
While the work touches on major social issues, it maintains the intimacy of interpersonal exchange and includes idiosyncrasies and humour as well as social comment. This exhibition will draw on several bodies of Clay’s work in relation to the female subject and the larger context of changing social expectations regarding surveillance and the illusion of information.
* Imaginary Standard Distance is a phrase from the book Art and Illusion by E.H.Gombrich. It is chosen for its poetic resonance rather than as a literal reference. Gombrich is referring to the trick of scale in perspective whereby you hold up your hand to cover a house in the landscape. In our minds, we still see the hand as smaller or somehow "normalized" even though, in a purely visual sense, it is larger because of its nearness. The idea is basically that what we know, or think we know, affects perception.
Twitch
from the series Some
places in the world a woman could walk, 1993,
Collection of the Kenderdine Art Gallery
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