Tia Halliday and Amy Modahl
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Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art 103-421 Cawston Ave, Rotary Centre for the Arts, Kelowna, British Columbia V1Y 6Z1
Tia Halliday and Amy Modhal, Invitation
Tia Halliday uses performance, photography and dance as a way of physically negotiating paradigms of painterly abstraction. Her performances, or performed paintings, are a mode of generative research; to analyze, create and pose questions about the body’s relationship to painting and sculpture.
If Eyes had Feet: The Kinesthetic Pictorial will include the exhibition of five digital performance collages on aluminum created from documentation of her performance work. In addition, the exhibition will feature a series of photographs and paper collages created by the artist, which act as physical artifacts of a highly embodied and multidisciplinary process.
To create her two-dimensional work, Halliday physically performs and choreographs common painterly tropes such as edge, flatness, depth and rhythm with the use of the body under dynamically sewn fabric cloaks or "sheaths." These sheaths mimic being underneath the skin of a painting. Beneath the intricately sewn garments, which include fabrics that both stretch and remain taught, props such as poles and harnesses are used to augment a sense of performed movement, the presence of the body and two-dimensional pictorial shape. She performs individually and invites guest dancers to perform choreographed works in both public and institutional settings.
Additionally, we have Amy Modhal's All of the words of the words will find words opening concurrently. Exhibiting in the Alternator window space, All of the words of the words will find words, is an installation in drawing and oil painting where visual and verbal language intersect. The hands can be a powerful communicative tool. A wave can confer a title, a shake can cement a deal, and a point can admonish. Hand gestures can be a metaphor for power, transformation, success, and failure, especially in politics where showmanship trumps honesty, and reality merges with theatre where the body speaks loudly.