Organic works
Published Saturday June 6th, 2009
'Eviscera' connects works of two Fredericton artists who provoke viewers to question inner obsessions, fears
It's a collaboration Carol Collicutt says is a great pairing.
Both she and fellow Fredericton-area artist WhiteFeather create works that intrinsically address obsessions and fears related to the body.
Eviscera, a six-week exhibition currently showing in the City of Saint John Gallery at the Saint John Arts Centre, surreptitiously intermixes their works.
In common is a fascination with organic materials. WhiteFeather's works are characterized by her use of bones, feathers and hair. Collicutt, meanwhile, uses pig gut as her primary medium.
Each explores how individuals react to the body: WhiteFeather in the process of change and decomposition, how individuals respond to death and move forward; while Collicutt questions interventions and invasions of the body, our search for transformation and control.
Both use found materials such as driftwood, discarded plastic and glass.
Even the colour scheme is congruent: fairly monochromatic and mostly flesh- toned.
"We both are very careful about colours," WhiteFeather says, "wanting the concept to be the dominant element."
Collicutt and WhiteFeather have known each other for many years, but it was while on the executive of Gallery Connexion, Fredericton's artist-run gallery, during the past couple years, that the idea of melding their works into one show percolated.
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Prominent in Eviscera are WhiteFeather's chimeras. These doll-like works are a reference to medieval creatures, part human, part animal, she says. Disparate parts are assembled to create mythological "super creatures."
She became fascinated with human representation while taking a course titled Myths, Magic and Religion at the University of New Brunswick.
"We learned about voodoo, remote cultural practices, connection of body and spirit, and how we deal with death, acceptance and how we keep going."
Each chimera is crafted mostly of detritus and remnants. Many of the pieces are organic, such as animal or bird skulls, driftwood, feathers, fur or hair. One work, Poppin, incorporates a small dead bird at its waistline. Man-made materials include abandoned fabric flowers and dirtied plastic legs from a child's discarded doll, as in the feminine work Effigia.
WhiteFeather incorporates cloth, waxed to resemble rawhide, to form part of the body - the core or a leg or arm - to represent a second skin.
The chimeras, she says, address fears about our bodies.
"We know so much about how our body works, yet we still have little control."
Two untitled works-in-progress are also included in Eviscera. One consists of a calf skull with a "yarn brain" and gilded teeth.
"It is one of the heads of a two-headed female creature," WhiteFeather says.
The other is a light installation of a female form.
The two reflect the artist's move toward larger works.
Carol Collicutt's works are frank and confrontational. The artist asks the viewer to consider women's desire for bodily perfection - an unattainable goal, she says, largely perpetrated by the media. She also explores obsession, the risks women will take with their health in pursuit of these aspirations.
Medical intervention is a theme. Titles include Surgeries, Damaged, Scar Tissue and Specimens. Some invasive measures are necessary, she says, while others are superfluous, even dangerous.
In Surgeries, which features two large-scale acrylics on mylar with overlays, she reprints scientific procedures for liposuction and breast augmentation, emphasizing the risks of such procedures through larger text.
Damaged, a set of three suspended works, features three female torsos. One is complete; another is missing part of the abdomen - representing the uterus; the other is missing a breast.
Perhaps most notable about Collicutt's work is her primary material - pig gut - a product she's been experimenting with for 15 years. The translucent medium, which is also used as sausage casing, creates delicate, organic works.
"It is utterly beautiful," Collicutt says, "not at all disgusting."
The material, which she gets from a butcher, can be laid flat in large pieces or strung. Collicutt has even sewn and knitted with gut - as she did for Cold Fish, a recent work created for the current Gallery Connexion exhibition Salmon Run.
For Eviscera, she uses it as a canvas and to create lacy forms and affix invented medical instruments.
It is very time-consuming to work with - she estimates it took 90 hours to create the three torsos for Damaged.
It's also very tricky, she says. "It must be wet to manipulate, and is extremely slippery to work with." Still, it is highly malleable, affixes to itself and is beautiful and symbolic.
"It's a metaphorical material," she says. It's living, visceral, organic - especially congruous to her theme of physical introspection.
"It's also intellectually loaded," she adds. "It is part of our language ... gut feeling, gut reaction."
Eviscera is on display at the Saint John Arts Centre until July 4. After that, it will travel to the Andrew and Laura McCain Gallery, in Florenceville, and to the Mary E. Black Gallery, in Halifax.
- Angie Kippers, Telegraph-Journal
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