Friday, June 22, 2012 to Friday, July 20, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, June 22, 7:00pm
In her first solo exhibition at Forest City Gallery, Amy Lockhart focuses on her familiar cast of female characters, producing them in painted, drawn, and sculpted form. Informed by popular and trash culture, these works investigate moments of undetermined tension, physical fragmentation and an unclear narrative.
Lockhart’s works are rendered with a homemade folk quality, but are paired with a sophisticated handling of materials resulting in an uncanny look onto what she calls “an absurd parallel universe”. One of the sculptures in the exhibition, Jessica’s Boots, 2012, alludes to a vanished character that has just recently disappeared, leaving nothing but her boots and socks behind. We are also confronted with Jessica herself in Bust of Jesscia, 2012, a sculpture created with papier mâché, paint and eyes made from cabochons, eyes that tend to follow us around the room. Several drawings and paintings contain many more of these ladies in a variety of poses, Lynne, Debbie, Marg and others. Lockhart’s Ladies allow the viewer to peer into this somewhat creepy constructed universe and explore the unresolved narrative fragments left behind by her protagonists.
About the Artist Amy Lockhart is a filmmaker, animator and artist, whose artwork and award winning films have been exhibited and screened internationally. Lockhart studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has been a resident artist at Calgary’s Quickdraw Animation Society, Struts Gallery, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The California Institute of the Arts. Her work was recently included in Not Bad for London at the Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario and in solo exhibitions at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis and Krets in Malmo, Sweden. Lockhart has received fellowship at the National Film Board of Canada and support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
image: Amy Lockhart, Bust of Jessica, Papier mâché, 2012