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Prelude

1997
installation

Mary Kavanagh's installation can be considered a type of personal inventory which examines the complex relationships between embodied memory and the inscription of social and scientific codes on the human body. Prelude is a trilogy comprised of: a video projection  –  Separation: until each space is walked through; a sculptural element  –  Distillation: in her element; and a sculptural and audio element  –  Balance: cloak room song. Viewed together, these produce a sustained reverie on memory, and on how art can recover intertwined personal and public histories and recuperate a complex sense of the passage of time. The primary inspiration for this work comes from the artist's re-visitation of her grandparents' house in Toronto in which her grandmother still lives. Both grandparents were chemists and were interested in the way science can illuminate existence both empirically and spiritually. The components of the installations are interwoven in much the same way that our thoughts of the past merge with a spectrum of events, images, and people. Separation, a video projection of the interior of the house brings together the artist's memories and the presence of those now absent. Distillation, constructed of sharpened metal rods and glass laboratory vessels inherited from her grandmother, makes reference to the past (alchemy, and the sublimated reference to medieval religious painting) as well as to the procedures of modern science as a way of understanding the world. Balance, consisting of a painted wooden mantelpiece with a scale placed on it and the barely audible sounds of a piano and footsteps (from hidden speakers), recalls the intangible, invisible nature of both music and memory. As a unified whole, Prelude reminds us that the passage of time, tangible but elusive, is what makes our lives mysterious; simultaneously holding us in its grasp while releasing us.

From Dan Ring, Curator, "Ruth Chambers and Mary Kavanagh: Pneuma and Prelude," Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon SK, 1997.

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Prelude

1997
video

Mary Kavanagh's installation can be considered a type of personal inventory which examines the complex relationships between embodied memory and the inscription of social and scientific codes on the human body. Prelude is a trilogy comprised of: a video projection  –  Separation: until each space is walked through; a sculptural element  –  Distillation: in her element; and a sculptural and audio element  –  Balance: cloak room song. Viewed together, these produce a sustained reverie on memory, and on how art can recover intertwined personal and public histories and recuperate a complex sense of the passage of time. The primary inspiration for this work comes from the artist's re-visitation of her grandparents' house in Toronto in which her grandmother still lives. Both grandparents were chemists and were interested in the way science can illuminate existence both empirically and spiritually. The components of the installations are interwoven in much the same way that our thoughts of the past merge with a spectrum of events, images, and people. Separation, a video projection of the interior of the house brings together the artist's memories and the presence of those now absent. Distillation, constructed of sharpened metal rods and glass laboratory vessels inherited from her grandmother, makes reference to the past (alchemy, and the sublimated reference to medieval religious painting) as well as to the procedures of modern science as a way of understanding the world. Balance, consisting of a painted wooden mantelpiece with a scale placed on it and the barely audible sounds of a piano and footsteps (from hidden speakers), recalls the intangible, invisible nature of both music and memory. As a unified whole, Prelude reminds us that the passage of time, tangible but elusive, is what makes our lives mysterious; simultaneously holding us in its grasp while releasing us.

From Dan Ring, Curator, "Ruth Chambers and Mary Kavanagh: Pneuma and Prelude," Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon SK, 1997.