Table of Con­tents | Arti­cle doi: 10.17742/IMAGE.SA.12.1.2 | PDF

This image is neither decorative nor strictly available for simple denotative description. Our project rejects captions altogether. The spirit of this project is very much one of uncertainty and imagination. We hope that anyone with visual impairments will glean information from the written compositions.

As an artist, cura­tor and par­ent, the pro­posed theme of antic­i­pa­tion and this spon­ta­neous process of cre­ation ini­tial­ly evoked feel­ings of ner­vous­ness and loss, and at the same time hope and opti­mism for some­thing new. I fran­ti­cal­ly set forth in my cre­ative process to rep­re­sent and com­mu­ni­cate my sense of things, social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly, at this par­tic­u­lar moment in time. Tues­day May 21, 2019. On this day, my frag­ment­ed thoughts and real­iza­tions that sur­faced in three works involved: notions of the rep­e­ti­tion of his­to­ry and our role as mak­ers in record­ing, and re-record­ing, the impor­tance of auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal reflec­tion; and under­stand­ing the pow­er of the indi­vid­ual voice as well as focus­ing on the banal, every­day rou­tine and its role in survival.

I began to pho­to­graph the space around me—my home and the gallery that the exhi­bi­tion of Struc­tures of Antic­i­pa­tion would take place in. I was on the inside look­ing out, view­ing my neigh­bour­hood and imme­di­ate sur­round­ings. This process of look­ing allowed me to take pause, to make and cre­ate work that could only be reflec­tive of time. I simul­ta­ne­ous­ly found myself think­ing of Van Gogh’s Bed­room in Arles (1888), and Vir­ginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own (1926). Each pho­to­graph that I select­ed was trans­ferred onto a piece of Japan­ese paper, and then placed into my type­writer. The first embed­ded text read, “From this place, in this moment, where you are right now; have we been here before?” In rela­tion to this work, I wrote the days of the week.

Sun­day

Mon­day

Tues­day

Wednes­day

Thurs­day

Fri­day

Sat­ur­day

Sun­day

Mon­day

The sec­ond image a self-por­trait of my reflec­tion in the gallery win­dow, includ­ing the typed text “Tues­day May 21, 2019 9:09pm,” accom­pa­nied by text read­ing “Woman in a Gallery Antic­i­pat­ing,” and the third image, “Where are we going? When will we be there? What are we going to do next?” All ques­tions often asked and repeat­ed over and over by my two daugh­ters, now five and six. This work par­al­leled an emer­gency kit list that I had put togeth­er while trav­el­ing to Chile with my two young chil­dren. After expe­ri­enc­ing a small earth­quake while there, I decid­ed it was nec­es­sary to always be prepared.

Water, Flash­light, Change of Clothes, Pass­ports, Health Cards, Some Food, Boots, First Aid Kit, Pil­lows, Sleep­ing Bags, Jack­ets, Phone Charg­er, Can­dles, Matches.

The mate­r­i­al ele­ment of thread is then added into the works, each work pushed through the sewing machine. Sewn to rep­re­sent sheets of lined paper, thread­ing thoughts of what now seems to be an obso­lete form for retain­ing and record­ing knowl­edge in our dig­i­tal culture.

With pre­pared­ness in the fore­front of our actions, liv­ing by exam­ple in our com­mu­ni­ties, giv­ing voice to opin­ion, and doing what we can from the place in which we stand, we can antic­i­pate pos­i­tive change. In my opin­ion, as a mother/artist cre­at­ing in the midst of the cur­rent glob­al cli­mate, polit­i­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly, it is always impor­tant to have hope, hold it tight, nur­ture it and be kind.