An interpretive essay response to Michaela Bridgemohan’s exhibition, embalmbed funks by Karis Dimas-Lehndorf
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An interpretive essay response to Erin Scott’s exhibition, 9/3. This essay was donated to the Alternator by the author.
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An interpretive essay response to Puppets Forsakens’ exhibition, The Noisebau.
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An interpretive essay response to Natasha Harvey’s exhibition, Layered Landscapes: Landscape Art, Politics, and Love.
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An interpretive essay response to Christine D’Onofrio’s cat cat cat by Claire Geddes Bailey.
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On December 3rd, 2022, Katherine Pickering met with M.E. Sparks over Zoom to discuss her exhibition of new work at the Alternator Center for Contemporary Art. This is an excerpt of that conversation.
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By the time we reach adulthood, the written word has long since stopped holding any mystery for us. We are so accustomed to the tiny black shapes arranged in their tidy lines across the page that our minds jump immediately to the message they carry, forgetting to look at the spaces they occupy. Occasionally, something will challenge this easy ritual: we learn a new language and we remember the magic of discovering new meaning where before there was none; we struggle with a word puzzle that ruptures the distinction between a word’s shape and its meaning; and, sometimes, we learn that we have been using a word incorrectly and are stunned and maybe a little embarrassed when it unveils its true self. But, for the most part, in our day to day lives, language is a seamless conduit for the sense and meaning we seek, and we entirely take for granted that it will accomplish its given task.
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Audie Murray’s work first came to my attention in the form of a circulated Instagram image of a pair of sport socks with a beaded sole, Pair of Socks (2017). I immediately was drawn to thinking about these works, what does it mean to walk on these beads, to feel them on the feet- their potential to break-and how do they relate to historic works of moccasins with beaded soles? I was invested in the artist’s practice that I view as a mix of humour, skills-based material process and an intuitive sense. In another recent work, T.P. (2018) a roll of toilet paper is beaded with a dusty rose scalloped design that covers the entire surface of the tissue (a work that has become predictive of the global pandemic in 2020 and the rush on bulk toilet paper purchases!). A visceral materiality that lives in a bodily conceptual aesthetic is one of the ways I started to see Audie Murray’s work. This materiality is, at times, also concerned with a good laugh, an important healing belly laugh along with memories of laughter and who we share it with. In this exhibition, As Old as The Hills, these themes continue in the body of work on exhibition at Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, BC (July 31- Sept. 12, 2020).
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