From two-person exhibition: Prelude and Pneuma | Mary Kavanagh and Ruth Chambers
Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
28 August - 1 November 1998
SAW Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
10 March - 21 April 1999
Installation: chemistry glass and instrumentation; steel rods and clamps; video projection; shelf with audio
Prelude examines memory and the inscription of social and scientific codes on the body.
The central work, Distillation: in her element, consists of a matrix of sharpened metal rods on which are suspended a collection of 200 antique glass laboratory vessels. Dating from the early modern era at the turn of the twentieth century, this collection evokes the promise of progress through scientific inquiry. On each piece of glass clings a skin of dust, evidence of time and obsolescence. The complex network of precision-machined rods and clamps suggests a laboratory of fantastic proportion.
Mary Kavanagh inherited this collection from her grandparents who were career chemists. The organic chemistry laboratory they established in the 1950s in the basement of their Toronto home became the artist’s childhood playground, a fertile space of imagination and wonder, a forbidden space of mystery and lurking danger.
Balance: cloak room song consists of a wooden mantelpiece on which sits a set of scales. Barely audible sounds of a piano evoke the intangible, invisible nature of both music and memory.
Separation: until each space is walked through is a cinematic video projection of a slow walk through the home.