Gabe Duggan and Jodi Stuart both explore ideas of digital & new media as well as virtual vs. physical spaces in their individual practices. This exhibition touches on these ideas translated into three dimensional artworks using both digital and handmade approaches, resulting in an exciting interplay of color, form, and imagery.
Jodi Stuart Artist Statement:
Through my practice, I explore aspects of virtual culture in relation to its aesthetic of hyper-stimulation and sensory overload. My works play on aspects of the virtual versus the physical, using the tools and materials of high-tech/digital culture combined with the handmade and tactile. I aim to create works that simultaneously allude to craft traditions, weaving, knitting, basket-making; as well as virtual space, neural networks, cloud computing, and bio-mimicry.
My work simulates binary systems, drawing attention to interreliance between dichotomies by positioning grey areas in balanced tension. Textile strategies, technology, and materials have been a reliable foundation for my work to reflect social, political, and historical implications of power. I construct installations in three-dimensional space by applying principles of tension and repetition to post-consumer, and post-industrial materials. These works range from intimate to significant in scale through material choice and context. By building elaborate, inherently vulnerable systems, I render impermanence and precarity prominent, challenging perception and values of functionality.