Nerve Damage
Struts Gallery (2018)
A site specific installation made over a two-and-a-half week period at Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick. The work for this exhibition was an investigation into the contradictions inherent in concepts of invasiveness. Together these works are in dialogue with one another and the town surrounding the exhibition.
Corner, a piece positioned in the back corner of the gallery space, consists of vertical bands of bird spikes attached to the walls of the gallery. Bird spikes are devices often used to protect buildings and signage from birdlife, scaring them off with the threat of injury. By arranging the spikes on the gallery wall they are protecting the walls from people rather than from birdlife.
Tattoo is an illustration of a frangula alnus plant, tattooed on a piece of skin-textured silicone. Frangula alnus is the most invasive plant in New Brunswick. It was introduced by European settlers 200 years ago and had been propagated by birds who fed on its berries, mostly infesting marshlands such as those around the site of exhibition.
Mice is a series of 30 hand felted mice-shaped cat toys made of cat hair. The cat hair was sourced from a local cat shelter.
