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Opening Reception - Thursday, April 4 @ 8PM
If someone collected the dust-bunnies from your home and examined them in detail, what would they find? This is precisely what Clint Wilson has done at Access Gallery in one half of the two-person exhibition (Clint Wilson and Dax Morrison) opening on Thursday, April 4th.
Both Edmonton-based artist Clint Wilson and Toronto-based Dax Morrison use exhibition spaces as the impetus for their projects by collecting source material related the gallery they have been invited to show at.
Wilson requested dust to be collected from Access Gallery, which was then packaged up and sent to him. Access Gallery is housed at 206 Carrall, an old building by Vancouver standards (it survived the great fire of 1886) and as such, dust is plentiful. When magnified 3000 - 4000 times, the collected dust reveals monstrous specimens that revel in minute detail, presenting the variation and complex composition of dust physiology.
Where Wilson observes the internal and individual detrius at Access Gallery, Morrison turns his view outwards and examines the gallery space within the larger context of the system of exhibiting art. In keeping with earlier projects presented across Canada, Morrison asked galleries to participate in his exhibition by providing him with a small sample of the paint used by each gallery to regularly paint their walls. These paint samples will ultimately become a site specific work at Access Gallery. Morrison's project encompasses artist run centres, public galleries, and commercial galleries of all types.
These artists' projects deal directly with the architecture of the exhibition space and the structure of the systems that support exhibition practices. Both Wilson and Morrison utilize strategies that rely on concepts of beauty and historical strategies of art production - Wilson through still life photography and Morrison via with modernist colour field painting. Together both artists trace a topology of the site as a unique space filled with potentially infinite spatial narratives.
Dax Morrison completed his MFA at the University of Windsor in 2004 and his undergraduate degree at the Ontario College of Art and Design. He has had solo shows at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Open Studio in Toronto, and has participated in group shows at Gallery 44, Toronto and Forest City Gallery, London. He would like to acknowledge the support received from the Ontario Arts Council.
Clint Wilson has worked as an artist since 1988 upon graduation from the University of Victoria. There he studied with Mowry Baden and Roland Brenner, educational models who provided impetus for the integration of personal, political and aesthetic content with in his practice. Through his company, Integrated Wilderness Systems, he constructs multi-media environments that reflect upon processes of cognition while becoming alternative models for the comprehension of natural states.