Nickle Galleries

Diana Thorneycroft, Black Forest (dark waters)

Exhibition dates: January 30 - April 11
Gallery hours: Monday to Wednesday 10:00-17:00, Thursday 10:00- 20:00, Friday 10:00-17:00, Saturday 11:00-16:00
Opening Reception: January 30, 17:00-20:00

Black Forest (dark waters) brings together three interconnected bodies of work. The two sculptural installations are presented as physical evidence of the cryptic narrative that unfolds in the photographs. Thematically, the work addresses issues of difference, alteration, abjection; all tied together as in a fairy tale. Herd consists of more than a hundred and fifty plastic toy horses, half of which have been altered, galloping up a 40-foot ramp. At the end of the ramp, which in its entirely is covered with a blanket of snow, they appear to be leaping through the gallery wall. While the familiar shapes and the stiff action poses remains for some of the horses, others are disfigured and morphed: melted, mangled, and altered with prosthetics, pieces of wood, nails, badger claws, bones, hair, and teeth. These horses appear at once vulnerable and powerful, tamed and wild. The photographic series Black Forest (dark waters) explores the relationship between horses and the humanoid keepers of their herd. The horses, herdsmen, and their interactions exist in the realm of the uncanny and the grotesque; informed by fairy tales and mythology, the Black Forest is a dangerous place that provides the stage for intersecting dynamics of power, violence, ritual, desire, and care. The third body of work Village, displayed on a large low plinth, consists of strange architectural constructions that "house" the herdsmen and some of the horses. Not unlike the sentient beings presented in the installation, the buildings, huts, chairs, swings, ladders etc. are structurally flawed and embellished with a myriad of equally unorthodox textures.

This exhibition is wheelchair accessible.
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Canada