EXHIBIT
Melissa Fisher: Be Be Present
When: Opens Friday, 7-11 p.m. Continues through Nov. 30
Where: Souvenir Gallery, 120-560 Johnson St.
Like graffiti artists who know their work may soon be painted over, installation artists often create pieces they know won't last.
It makes the documentation process that much more imporant. And for Toronto artist Melissa Fisher, who has incorporated those images into the works she'll display in Victoria this month, it also means giving new life to older work.
"Because everything I make usually gets dismantled or destroyed, I use documentation photographs to create new work," she said. "[It's] sort of this alternate reality of the original piece."
In one piece, the image of a large ring draped with strips of fabric - which once hung on its own - is now repeated in miniature, in lines across a long vertical strip of white fabric at Victoria's Souvenir Gallery.
There's also a refocusing, through regurgitation. Gone is the strong point of focus in the original piece, which is turned back on itself through a cycle of repetition, she said. This and other pieces will hang together in an immersive installation made of red thread at the centre of the gallery.
"The entire exhibition will be in a huge installation that's totally symmetrical and works as a whole," she said. "Everything will play off one another, but everything is separate."
Be Be Present is Fisher's first solo show. It fits well with the mandate of Souvenir Gallery, which has represented about 20 local and national emerging artists since opening as a temporary pop-up space in July, thanks to an art and heritage grant from the Greater Victoria Spirit Committee.
While the initial plan was to pop up for a single summer show, director Tara Hurst managed to lengthen the gallery's life by several months through volunteerism and a special agreement with her Market Square landlords.
This will be the gallery's sixth and final exhibition in its current space. However, Hurst plans to pop up again, under the same name in a potentially new location, if she can secure future funding.
"I don't know when, so I don't want to say when it will happen, but that's my intention," she said.
Hurst has been following Fisher's work since the two studied sculpture and installation together at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She looked forward to adding Fisher to the roster of artists that Souvenir has already represented. Plus, there's the added symmetry of bringing an artist from one island to another - Fisher creates most of her work from a studio on Lake Ontario's Toronto Island.
Fisher, who was born in Lethbridge, Alta., and grew up in Oakville, Ont., before moving to Toronto, also created some of the primary works for the show during her residency at the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts and her Water Walk Sky Artist Residency.
She described the process of creating installations as meditative. While these new works access different realities in the history of her pieces, the show's title is a reminder to live in the present.
"I think it's almost a reminder to kind of live now, or be aware of what's going on in real time," said Fisher. "I'm really interested in the fact that we have the capacity to exist in multiple realities at one time."
She gave the example of using iPhones and checking Facebook while engaging in a separate conversation with someone.
"We're moving through all these different spaces at once," she said.
