STRINGS
Elizabeth Warner
The Cube
June 29 to September 7, 2013
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
This 2013 Curator’s Choice exhibition is the ninth annual presentation of work by a student graduate from Thompson Rivers University Visual Arts Department. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, this year's Curator’s Choice features Elizabeth Warner’s Strings.
Through an ambitious installation of meticulously constructed marionettes and video projection showing the marionettes performing in a surreal world, Warner examines nostalgia and loss. In this project, Warner utilizes stop-frame animation and puppetry to recreate recent events with her partner and family memories related to the loss of her brother. Her brother Nicholas’ memory pervades the video, floating amidst vignettes of imagined landscapes in which brother and sister share experiences. The artist has created a fictitious world that she wishes to share with her brother that exists alongside real experience, blurring the lines between memory and imagination.
Warner’s work questions the authenticity of longing in relation to nostalgia. The marionettes inhabit the Gallery, recalling memories of the puppet shows Warner’s grandfather would perform for the grandchildren. A life-sized marionette depicting Warner’s grandfather stands in the space overlooking the exhibition as the quirky movements of the puppets in the video recall the movements of the grandfather and reflect the disjointed recollections of memory.
Installation view of Elizabeth Warner:
Strings
Photo: Kamloops Art Gallery
