MAIN SPACE EXHIBITION
DECEMBER 8 – DECEMBER 23, 1995
RECEPTION: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1995 AT 8 PM
ARTIST TALK: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1995 AT 2 PM
LOCATION – STRIDE GALLERY
722, 11 AVE S.W, CALGARY, ALBERTA
EXHIBITION INFORMATION
This exhibition of works by Martha Townsend, entitled ENTRE LE SILENCE ET L’ECOUTE (Between Silence and Listneing), explores the resonance of the circular and pheric forms that permeate her work. Through her reseach on the closed, perfect, ideal, and even sublimated figure of the sphere, the artist invariably induces us to look closelt at the exterior of her obects. Only sustained observation can provide us with the impetus we need to break through their surface and apprehend that inner power of theirs which resides in the invisible.
ARTIST BIO
MARTHA TOWNSEND was born and grew up in Ottawa, Ontario. She moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia to study art at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1978.
EXHIBITION TEXT
“I really like the sphere for its selfness. It doesn’t exist in nature, as a perfect thing. Instead it’s a human concept, and the embodiment of a concept; it’s not a representation of something. And thought it’s hermetic, it’s still easy to relate to…”
This exhibition of works by Martha Townsend, entitled ENTRE LE SILENCE ET L’ECOUTE (Between Silence and Listneing), explores the resonance of the circular and pheric forms that permeate her work. Through her reseach on the closed, perfect, ideal, and even sublimated figure of the sphere, the artist invariably induces us to look closelt at the exterior of her obects. Only sustained observation can provide us with the impetus we need to break through their surface and apprehend that inner power of theirs which resides in the invisible.
The idea of silence and listening, in the context of Martha Townsend’s work, is a metaphor borrowed ffrom the titles of two scultures featured in the present exhibition: Silence and Listen. Silence, a marble bas relief inscribed with its title and the image of a seeing-eye dog, suggests a relationship between sight and hearing, blindness and silence.
Listen translates its title info form. The inquisitive viewer, having perused the large velvet bell’s outer contours, could slip inside to experience the surrounding seclusion and silence. However, as absolute silence is impossible to attain, the viewer will hear, if nothing else, the sound of his or her own body. It is a singular experience, this response to the invitation to “Listen!” which questions the nature of silence and listening, of the spoken and the unspoken.
Thus, the artist emphasizes the permeability of the sense, a phenomenon she uses to such great effect throughout her work. Firmly located in the interstices between different perceptual fields, the work triggers the transformation of a clearly sensory experience into a mental experience.
Between silence and listening, the exhibition sets out an itinerary in which imaginary goes beyond lived experience.
-Yolande Racine, guest curator
