AXENÉO7 | August 14, 2019 – August 31, 2019

MASTERS OF FINE ARTS THESIS

Water and stone have a voice, they speak a language and have a history of conversation that extends well beyond our fleeting human existence.

Materiality and time are central to my practice: my work intervenes into and abstracts elements in a relatively minimal way, thereby activating available associations as a part of overall meaning. Over the course of thousands of years, copper and stone transform beyond and within the realm of human intervention. Stone and copper, once fire, liquid and lucid from the confines of their solid state; ebbed and flowed like water beneath the islands from which we build our lives.

Édifice, conveys the human and environmental impacts on the materials, as well as socio-political and cosmological impacts of colonialism and Indigenous resistance. The square patterning of the sculpture gestures to the long relations between Indigenous Nations and what would become Canada. The piece conceptualizes Indigenous and settler relations over the last 500 years through this representation of land. These collections of stones have moved and settled on the land paralleling histories of migration, displacement, erasure, and the resilient ties of communities that connect across space. Carved and lined with copper, they seemingly radiate heat – as the years pass, the glow of the copper fades and turn green, the stones settle and take their place amongst those who have travelled before them.

The Line, the Road, the Horizon (2019)

IMAGES: Julia Martin