Nonsuch Garden was the result of my artistic activity exploring the visual language of water and its repositories, as well as vessels that traverse that natural element. The exhibition merged motifs of ships and gardens within a fractured framework of colonialism that considers a possible future through a lens from the past. Anchoring the exhibition was a collaborative installation piece created with Dickson Bou, “Mastgarden,” that not only assimilated with the gallery infrastructure, but also impelled the pieces on the walls into the depths of the surrounding “waters.” Flanking the structure were photographic, collaged wood wall panels that graphically abstracted and integrated the ship/garden motifs. Complementing this composition was a series of collaged balsawood pieces on paper that denote the ships that transported European ideologies to the new frontier. Suggesting further abstracted concepts of time and displacement was a set of photographic and stencil works on glass that transmute into portholes. A stop-motion animation produced in conjunction with artist Jennifer Wanner, helped to take the viewer into the domain of an invested poetic assertion concerning a contemporary moment of transition and challenge.

REVIEWS

Patrick Mahon by Anna Kovler
Akimbo by Terence Dick