SustainableCities: A Collective Eclipsing | Curated by Imogen Clendinning
Brigitta Zhao, Philip Gurrey, Michelle Wilson, Theo Jean Cuthand, Danielle Petti, and Jessica Joyce
Exhibition: November 14 – December 5 | artLAB Gallery. Photography by Dickson Bou
An eclipse is in sense, a collaboration between two forces, passing across one another from immense distances and meeting in a cosmic dance. In the works of Theo Jean Cuthand, Philip Gurrey, Jessica Joyce, Danielle Petti, Michelle Wilson and Brigitta Zhao, intangible collaborative dynamics play out in acts of creation; in processes of remediation, explorations of materiality, human and non-human relations, interdisciplinary exchange and the use of digital technology, artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure. The eclipse serves as an ontological tool to rethink relations between matter and maker, situating material as not a resource to be mined, but an autonomous entity with its own logics and priorities. These many eclipses rotate and converge between critiques of colonial extraction and pollution, the poetry of minerals, microplastics, corn and rust, and various datafications of the environment. Partnering with the Free Appropriate Sustainable Technology (FAST) research group in Western Engineering, A Collective Eclipsing features 3-d printing technology and solar power, in a celebration of digital infrastructures that require collaboration between the Sun, the weather, the artist and engineer.
Gathering Tendencies | Recycled paper, neptune balls, thread, branch, lightboxes, solar panels. | Danielle and Jessica collaborated to extend the neptune balls’ mission to gather and capture materials.
Gathering Tendencies | Recycled paper, neptune balls, thread, branch, lightboxes, solar panels. | Danielle and Jessica collaborated to extend the neptune balls’ mission to gather and capture materials.
Fracture | Danielle Petti | The piece captures a mapped and sculpted fracture in grey-green shale, painted with its own pigment to emphasize the rock’s agency and the dialogue between geological process and artistic intervention.
Fleetingly Red | Using X-Ray Fluorescence at UWO’s Earth Sciences lab, I analyzed a local shale's elemental composition, integrating its pigment into my art to explore the enigmatic relationship between scientific understanding and the subjective experience of a rock.
Artwork in this image by: Danielle Petti and Jessica Joyce
Artwork in this image by: Brigitta Zhao and Danielle Petti
Artwork in this image by: Philip Gurrey and Danielle Petti