23 June – 25 July 2020
Cloaks and constructed canvases.
Over many years Philippa Blair explored the inherent possibilities of the unstretched, folded and hanging canvas. Within the sculptural, the articulated, the encircling and opening canvases there is always a sense of there being more, always more to reveal. All can be seen as a metaphor perhaps for Blair’s artistic and personal journey.
Blair's cloaks hold the ongoing evidence of her journeys both physical and in light of recent events in the United States, almost prophetic. And then there is the journey into the heart of Shakespeare, redolent with the possibilities of tragedy and politics.
Blair's book works opened new possibilities for Blair: pages, separations, beginnings, middles, ends, the images overlapping, as in timelines, filmic sequences, or musical scores. We can view the pages as singular works, or chapters, or we can allow the events to fold over and into one another, revealing bits of the past and glimpses of the future (much as we experience music and life) the past, present, and future all seeming to flow together at times, cacophonous or rhapsodic.
