Billy McCarroll | Janice Rahn | Michael Campbell

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Billy McCarroll, "Cover Up"

Cover up Series                Billy McCarroll

In my recent works I have continued my use of collage with the use of text and images from my collection of Art History Books and Catalogues.

This exhibition includes a catalogue from an exhibition of Russian Avant Guard as well as writings on Cubism and Jean Arp. The materials used are Japanese pattern paper, cardboard packing material, pastel, graphite and acrylic paint.

Composition in the Shape of a Pod.  Janice Rahn

This work initially took shape from sketches of a desiccated poppy pod. The title also references the surrealist composer Erik Satie who was criticized for not having enough form. His response was a piece entitled, Composition in the shape of a Pear.  

The form of the cage-like poppy pod allowed for tension both formally and conceptually, between control/constraints and chaos, in the representation of Nature and the female form. The form became a rational point of departure for intuitive play with more expressive lines and historical references within fashion, garden structures, colonialism (such as exotic birds collected and displayed in hats), and in repetitive art historical themes such as the Rape of Europa. I continue to work with monotype and porcelain to move between 2D and 3D forms. Both media allow flexibility in additive and subtractive methods to form and evolve images.  

Field Recordings of Icebergs Melting, Michael Campbell

Michael Campbell is interested in obsolete technologies, remote landscapes, purposeless inventions, suburban boredom, bad sci-fi films, utopic schemes, adolescent fantasy sketchbooks and handmade tools. Field Recordings of Icebergs Melting is a recent body of work that has been touring across Canada since 2008.   This ever-expanding series incorporates a range of materials and objects, including:  driftwood, copper, zinc, cloth-covered wiring, stressed plywood, cogs, levers, sphagnum moss, canvas, vacuum tubes, hemp line, rusted brake line, brass ornamentation, and thousands of tiny nails. 

The Field Recordings project suggests a practical, though unknowable purpose, a history of repair beyond the vessels’ lifespans, and a sense of future and past technologies merging.  Each vessel becomes a character in itself and suggests the absent pilot, either still residing within the hull or long since passed on.  This series is inspired by many filmic references of the vessel as an integral character, such as in: The African Queen, The Phoenix (Flight of the Phoenix), The Millennium Falcon and The Discovery (Kubrick’s 2001).