March 7 – April 12, 2015
The Colborne Art Gallery is pleased to present Now, an exhibition of new work by Colborne Art Gallery Member Pat Stanley.
“Now” is a visual dialogue about the tensions generated by the interaction of man-made and natural landscapes. Pat’s work explores primal issues about the environment, the Universe and our place in it. It presents us with phenomena in distant parts (and times) of the Universe interacting with built structures from our daily lives. Abandoned and destroyed homes and residences, factories, expressways and drive-in theatres exist in a shared virtual space with nebulae and galaxies. It is a meditation on space, time and memory.
Pat’s exhibition runs at the Colborne Art Gallery from March 7 through April 12, 2015. Work by the rest of The Colborne Art Gallery members will be on display in the other two galleries.
An opening reception with the artist present will be held on Saturday, March 7 from 2-4 pm. All are welcome to attend.
Press
Art Gallery opens Now – Northumberland Today, February 26, 2015
COLBORNE – It is a cold February day, and I have come to Cobourg to chat with Pat Stanley about her upcoming exhibition at The Colborne Art Gallery.
Her show, titled Now, opens on March 7 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Once inside her living room, my eye is drawn to several of her large canvases, which simultaneously depict the familiar and the other-worldly, the nearest and the farthest of vistas. As a visual artist, Stanley has become known for juxtapositions of architectural and interstellar scenes. Her paintings combine Hubble Space Telescope images with those of earth-bound constructs, including cityscapes, concrete overpasses and abandoned buildings.
A member of the Colborne Art Gallery since 2008, Stanley has been instrumental in much of the gallery’s recent evolution. At this exhibition, she intends to pioneer its latest development, the installation of multi-media facilities in one of its rooms. This will allow the gallery to show digital, electronic and video installations, opening its doors to artists who work in new media or who wish to complement their exhibitions with media installations.
Stanley photographed a painting in progress at the end of each day, and digitally combined these images together to create a video of the changes that take place throughout the painting’s creation. The video will be projected onto the back wall of a darkened gallery room to create a kind of Zen moment of quietly watching an image unfold before one’s eyes.
We spent some time discussing her technique of creating the celestial bodies in her paintings, then constructing the architectural elements on top of them — a process which will be illustrated by the video portion of her exhibition.
The images for her current series were influenced in part by driving on Highway 401. Hence her paintings contain images that are familiar to us: concrete overpasses, on-off ramps and billboard advertisements, offering messages that could be open to interpretation. However, by mingling monochromatic images of man-made concrete with stunning colourful renderings of celestial phenomena, millions of light-years distant, she creates an extreme contrast, an impossible pairing of the infinite with the transient.
“I always have to have a message, and it is usually something apocalyptic,” Stanley laughs, when describing the meaning behind her paintings.
The message one might receive from this artwork is that what seems permanent from a human perspective may only be a momentary fragment when seen from the infinite perspective of the Universe.
Now runs through April 12, with the opening reception on Saturday, March 7, from 2 to 4 p.m. All are welcome, admission is free, and the Colborne Art Gallery is fully wheelchair-accessible.
The gallery is located at 51 King St. E. in Colborne, and hours are Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m.
— Monika Devine
Scene’s From Pat’s Opening:
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Town Hall
As part of our partnership with the Township of Cramahe, Pat has “Antennae Galaxies : Overpass” on display in the main office of the Town Hall in Colborne.