https://nkwestman.com nicole kelly westman Wed, 12 May 2021 18:59:36 +0000 https://nkwestman.com en https://nkwestman.com/NICOLE-KELLY-WESTMAN Mon, 22 Jul 2019 21:01:40 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/NICOLE-KELLY-WESTMAN NICOLE KELLY WESTMAN&nbsp; Nicole Kelly Westman is a visual artist of Métis and Icelandic descent that recognizes with an indebted gratitude the artists that came before her and strenuously forged space, the curators that place care at the fore of their labour, the communities that foster confidence in her practice, and the institutions and organizations that implement policies prefacing relations of trust. As an artist she enjoys practices of listening, watching, hosting, poeticizing, foraging, and sharing. Westman was previously the director of Stride Art Gallery, holds a BFA from Emily Carr University (2012),&nbsp; and is currently rolling through regions like a tumbleweed. Her writing has been published in C Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, Instudio Magazine, and Luma Quarterly. 10 Artists Who Disrupt the Status Quo for&nbsp;Canadian Art by&nbsp;Sam Cotter https://nkwestman.com/writing-2 Sat, 15 Aug 2020 23:57:30 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/writing-2 WRITINGROLLING HILLS OF PRAIRIE GRASSES AS EXQUISITE AS RAINFOREST&nbsp;by Nicole Kelly Westman for exhibition&nbsp;Current Terrain curated by Ociciwan for imagineNATIVE Concrete constructs of linearity&nbsp;by Nicole Kelly Westman ISSUE 008, VOLUME TWO | SPRING 2017 Earthlings Review by Nicole Kelly Westman for Inuit Art Quarterly Spring 2017 https://nkwestman.com/muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation Wed, 12 May 2021 18:59:36 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation &nbsp; <img width="2910" height="1950" width_o="2910" height_o="1950" 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data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f7b065936b9c01ffa74c6a16434652da7e5a2822866d7331edae69546d75e1bd/02_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation-daytime.jpg" data-mid="108270579" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f7b065936b9c01ffa74c6a16434652da7e5a2822866d7331edae69546d75e1bd/02_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation-daytime.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1950" width_o="2910" height_o="1950" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e54b965fa3c094553c2e27f902e81f799dd9d812c57ae25c74aea7f7aedaed4/03_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation-daytime.jpg" data-mid="108270580" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e54b965fa3c094553c2e27f902e81f799dd9d812c57ae25c74aea7f7aedaed4/03_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation-daytime.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1950" width_o="2910" height_o="1950" 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data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/95dd5f1a40418117ba89dedcf15e329ec9ed87e1ba99bab81bafebd7db4fa8fb/02_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" data-mid="108256788" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/95dd5f1a40418117ba89dedcf15e329ec9ed87e1ba99bab81bafebd7db4fa8fb/02_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1557" width_o="2910" height_o="1557" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/94befe404727e877be15408c79d3766d75520849e431b349918dfe78e2b9c67f/03_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" data-mid="108256789" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/94befe404727e877be15408c79d3766d75520849e431b349918dfe78e2b9c67f/03_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1557" width_o="2910" height_o="1557" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/227ebb497bbbf930d9174a707ca1a664f6c8d58c25ef575ec1cd55b2307ebfb6/07_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" data-mid="108256793" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/227ebb497bbbf930d9174a707ca1a664f6c8d58c25ef575ec1cd55b2307ebfb6/07_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1557" width_o="2910" height_o="1557" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1f16015b843412a00c162399f04a7ef53c9ac05de803a26034e87a2fd4f6e3eb/04_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" data-mid="108256790" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1f16015b843412a00c162399f04a7ef53c9ac05de803a26034e87a2fd4f6e3eb/04_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1557" width_o="2910" height_o="1557" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/be776b73ab87d6715d2dd9c2bbce624aee7058517450e2d8ea51735c075ae1f5/05_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" data-mid="108256791" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/be776b73ab87d6715d2dd9c2bbce624aee7058517450e2d8ea51735c075ae1f5/05_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" /> <img width="2910" height="1557" width_o="2910" height_o="1557" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/34b7730a2e076fbb7955c204fab87de51749ffe2ed7d4ba59b5578759fa30d47/06_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" data-mid="108256792" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/34b7730a2e076fbb7955c204fab87de51749ffe2ed7d4ba59b5578759fa30d47/06_muddled-mirage-of-memories-escaping-encapsulation.jpg" /> muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation, (2021) CAG Façade January 22 – August 22, 2021 Nicole Kelly Westman | CAG Recorded Artist Discussion&nbsp; photo credit: Scott Massey (daytime) Soloman Chiniquay (evening)&nbsp;The practice of Nicole Kelly Westman is anchored in an ongoing concern with the conditions of image-making. Although Westman only occasionally uses cameras or produces anything akin to a photograph, her work deftly engages the tools, techniques and principles of photography to question the objectivity of the recorded moment. Light, in particular, is an essential collaborator for Westman. The glow of a sunbeam filtered through treetops; a city street at night, awash in the haze of sodium vapour lamps; the chromatic brilliance of a sunset: light for Westman is an opportunity to index the energies and intimacies that constitute any given moment and the ways in which it is perceived, documented and assigned meaning. In muddled mirage of memories escaping encapsulation, Westman presents a series of three works across CAG’s façade windows, each of which nods to the ways memory is shaped, staged and recalled. Referencing the backdrop, the mirror, the gel, and the cucoloris—each used in the photographic process to produce “ideal” images—these works offer a patient counterpoint to the fixity of the standalone photograph, drawing our attention to the felt structures found in light and shadow, sentiments that often elude being captured, shot, or taken. Curated by Matthew Hyland https://nkwestman.com/reflections-of-poetic-imposition Sun, 16 Aug 2020 01:05:03 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/reflections-of-poetic-imposition &nbsp; <img width="1800" height="3200" width_o="1800" height_o="3200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/80e9d15d33d3a2e0f8998034666424c524a816375608726697725f7dce16dba8/nkw_publicart_FINAL_02.jpg" data-mid="79988514" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/80e9d15d33d3a2e0f8998034666424c524a816375608726697725f7dce16dba8/nkw_publicart_FINAL_02.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="3200" width_o="1800" height_o="3200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5bac1539ff44d7745cb22764c22bafb586063c9f6a3e94511e91dd80008c2e85/nkw_publicart_FINAL_04.jpg" data-mid="79988516" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5bac1539ff44d7745cb22764c22bafb586063c9f6a3e94511e91dd80008c2e85/nkw_publicart_FINAL_04.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="3200" width_o="1800" height_o="3200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e6b81a9e220f5825773da6d414117a8bb4a932c88d8166dd70ad573a2ae2f36/nkw_publicart_FINAL_01.jpg" data-mid="79988513" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e6b81a9e220f5825773da6d414117a8bb4a932c88d8166dd70ad573a2ae2f36/nkw_publicart_FINAL_01.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="3200" width_o="1800" height_o="3200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6852608e49d8312f24c3e0a73eb4ad9108ec439c97d318fe41bd6f60f19dfcd3/nkw_publicart_FINAL_03.jpg" data-mid="79988515" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6852608e49d8312f24c3e0a73eb4ad9108ec439c97d318fe41bd6f60f19dfcd3/nkw_publicart_FINAL_03.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="3200" width_o="1800" height_o="3200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/80e9d15d33d3a2e0f8998034666424c524a816375608726697725f7dce16dba8/nkw_publicart_FINAL_02.jpg" data-mid="79988514" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/80e9d15d33d3a2e0f8998034666424c524a816375608726697725f7dce16dba8/nkw_publicart_FINAL_02.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="3200" width_o="1800" height_o="3200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e6b81a9e220f5825773da6d414117a8bb4a932c88d8166dd70ad573a2ae2f36/nkw_publicart_FINAL_01.jpg" data-mid="79988513" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e6b81a9e220f5825773da6d414117a8bb4a932c88d8166dd70ad573a2ae2f36/nkw_publicart_FINAL_01.jpg" /> reflections of poetic impositions, (2020) Platforms 2020: Public Works City of Vancouver&nbsp;August 3 – September 6, 2020 I’d come get you If you weren’t there If you’d listen I’d take you with me If you weren’t there I’d come get you reflections of poetic impositions are oscillating visual texts that that take their charge from the collaborative imaginations of their readers. These short poems, “I’d come get you, If you weren’t there, If you’d listen, I’d take you with me” positioned on mirror, reflect back at the reader with a tone particular to the reader’s owned lived experience – opening the text up to being interpreted as soothing sentiment or as maliciously overbearing. Situated in a space dominated by advertising, they might also easily be mistaken for vague advertisements in a world foregrounded by capitalist desire. https://nkwestman.com/The-Pandemic-is-a-Portal Sat, 15 Aug 2020 23:39:55 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/The-Pandemic-is-a-Portal <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3f3c6a5e9ce848c3947157f1d95c5d8482658d6811a827f149dfbcb160849c20/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_01.jpg" data-mid="79986556" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3f3c6a5e9ce848c3947157f1d95c5d8482658d6811a827f149dfbcb160849c20/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_01.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/74ac343daa115f5f98f11d300d5a393aa70ca80cd0037e6c96bd5367f544e262/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_02.jpg" data-mid="79986557" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/74ac343daa115f5f98f11d300d5a393aa70ca80cd0037e6c96bd5367f544e262/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_02.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0a31331adf9572ee23987dfbdffe4350adac61ccabbc1e96f386f53f407038bd/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_03.jpg" data-mid="79986558" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0a31331adf9572ee23987dfbdffe4350adac61ccabbc1e96f386f53f407038bd/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_03.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6bd705b9290315f89c431505addd13c78d26204298a987a94226e317d703ee8b/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_04.jpg" data-mid="79986559" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6bd705b9290315f89c431505addd13c78d26204298a987a94226e317d703ee8b/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_04.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5b84c09a0ecad64da4373e944fab6a388fd7dde0de449ed5439fff9504c6514d/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_05.jpg" data-mid="79986560" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5b84c09a0ecad64da4373e944fab6a388fd7dde0de449ed5439fff9504c6514d/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_05.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a921b37f4843f38d01319c4e2d8cefbabe567d4d25077973bc7f9c6eb1f0ee5c/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_10.jpg" data-mid="79986565" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a921b37f4843f38d01319c4e2d8cefbabe567d4d25077973bc7f9c6eb1f0ee5c/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_10.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bf6ca2bb40a3465f0b8ac6b147fa67a5901ec345d74995749f31d64948c89703/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_06.jpg" data-mid="79986561" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bf6ca2bb40a3465f0b8ac6b147fa67a5901ec345d74995749f31d64948c89703/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_06.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/17bb0683d90126fd84cd738ced68b5bd1279c3eacddd9bcf487004c1b78b714b/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_07.jpg" data-mid="79986562" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/17bb0683d90126fd84cd738ced68b5bd1279c3eacddd9bcf487004c1b78b714b/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_07.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d8f8b4ef316b26df10968c5a6687938d55d23adc80cc1ac893406896c2caa7eb/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_08.jpg" data-mid="79986563" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d8f8b4ef316b26df10968c5a6687938d55d23adc80cc1ac893406896c2caa7eb/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_08.jpg" /> <img width="2100" height="1800" width_o="2100" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a74a67dc7a66bc3a0c8dcb6bcaeded6a64172d01e2e6a95d5e3955cecbb98ede/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_09.jpg" data-mid="79986564" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a74a67dc7a66bc3a0c8dcb6bcaeded6a64172d01e2e6a95d5e3955cecbb98ede/oversharing-obscure-sentimentalities-nkw_09.jpg" /> The Pandemic is a Portal (2020) SFU Audain GalleryOctober 19, 2019 – January 5, 2020Including Artists: Simranpreet Anand, Anna Banana, Vanessa Brown / Francey Russell, Lacie Burning, Margaret Dragu / Justine A. Chambers / Kage, Lucien Durey, Jessica Evans, Elisa Ferrari, Sharona Franklin, Michelle Helene Mackenzie, Megan Hepburn, S F Ho, Julian Yi-Jong Hou, Hazel Meyer, Cindy Mochizuki, Cecily Nicholson, Carmen Papalia / Heather Kai Smith, Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, Jayce Salloum, and Nicole Kelly Westman. Curators:&nbsp; Karina Irvine, Christopher Lacroix and cheyanne turions Image Descriptions: Cheryl GreenNicole Kelly Westman: oversharing obscure sentimentalities Presented as part of The Pandemic is a Portal Reflecting on the ways that social media can act as a repository for personal revelations, oversharing obscure sentimentalities (2020) is a photographic series displaying the artist’s modest collection of keepsakes. For the making of the images, sunlight and Rosco film gels collaborate in the concealment of access to the intimacies that make the objects significant to their owner. Retaining a barrier of mystery to preserve the elusiveness of the objects documented allows the value of the collection to be casually interpreted. These arranged personal treasures have traversed many living arrangements, humidities, makeshift storage facilities, and communities to now occupy a space as a placeholder for the people affiliated to these legacies. [Image descriptions: A series of 10 photographs, each showing of a collection of everyday objects organized by colour, texture or use. Each set of objects is arranged and displayed in the style of a museum exhibition, treasures stored beneath glass. But the use of coloured gels and a sometimes hazy, sometimes light-splattered effect on the photographs clouds the images and calls into question the very notion of creating and documenting an archive. Rather, the series raises questions of our relationships to inanimate objects, what meaning they hold for us and how they are a glimpse into someone else’s world. [01: A set of four open blank books, partially in shadow, a yellow gel filtering the light. The gel is crinkled, creating a lighting effect of bright, glittery shapes in the air above the books. In one book, pressed, dried flowers. Another has cursive writing too small to read. The third, in large, green cursive script, “On the night before the funeral...” The fourth has large, bubbly outlined letters reading, I AM A TIRED OF HAVIN VULNERAB LE [02: An orangish hue cast over the photograph with sharp spots of red and yellow-green, bright as a neon light. The centrepiece, a crinkled paper with “take me with you” in cursive made with a calligraphy pen. Also included are a set of 1980s-era dangly earrings; a photo of a woman in a winter coat; an image of Goofy behind chicken wire; a pamphlet for Stonecraft Symposium In Dialogue (barely legible beneath the spray of red light); a handwritten, whimsical card in cursive with a drawing of a cat wearing a bow tie; and other objects difficult to parse. [03: Under a dark, almost sombre magenta hue, a photo of a young girl, eyes closed and grin overtaking her face; children’s drawings of large faces with no bodies; a watercolour of a house engulfed in black clouds in sharp contrast to a nearby small “Happy birthday!!!” drawing with a cherub-faced unicorn and a heart; another small birthday card is a cupcake coloured over in unrestrained strokes; at the center of the array, a long necklace with a coin-shaped pendant. [04: A magenta gel over a scrapbook style arrangement of photos, plus one framed photo and a set of two keys on a keyring. Light appears dappled through the gel, sometimes creating shadow, while at other times creating bright spots of fuchsia or green. The framed photo shows a man leaned forward on a racing motorcycle. Unframed photos include one with a small child on a parked motorcycle, a family inspecting a motorcycle, the Race City track, the happy family on jet skis, and dusky images of the outdoors. [05: Envelopes in the standard size as well as envelopes for greeting cards are aligned in an orderly, but not uniform grid. Several lie partially atop others. The light cast is reddish, and where light hits the folded gel, it shines a bright white and green, reminiscent of a light leak on film still photography. Envelopes are addressed to the artist, some with an address, others with only a name. Many have drawings or a circle around “Nicole.” One is adorned with shimmering cat and butterfly stickers. [06: A collection of letters retrieved from the envelopes lie beneath the cast of a bright orange gel. One is typed, and all others are handwritten. Some have been neatly folded in half or thirds, others crinkled, and the smaller ones lack fold marks at all. Letters are personal and intimate though nearly impossible to read through the gel, save for tender words like, “My dearest Nicole” with a heart dotting the “i;” “My dearest babe my dearest Nicole;” “I miss your soft hands….” [07: A personal library of 10 softcover and hardback books arranged in diagonal lines under a reddish-orangish light, a starter pack to knowing the artist. Viewed clockwise from the top left corner, the collection includes We like to be free in this country by Patricia A. McCormack, partially covered by In Different Situations Different Behavior Will Produce Different Results by Yania Lee in conversation with Chris Kraus and Jacob Wren; Black Diamond Dust; Brian Jungen’s Friendship Centre is partially masked by a pamphlet that is obscured by The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde; Our Metis Heritage...a portrayal; The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje with a deeply creased cover; Nascar: stories by Steffanie Ling lying partly atop Kaja Silverman’s The Miracle of Analogy or The History of Photography, Part 1. [08: Deep orange light over four stacks of neatly folded fabrics in a line. Most appear pale and monochromatic, but one piece, lying on its own is dark with slices of pale colour decorating its surface. Most of the fabric is tidy and smooth. One piece has lightly frayed edges and is wrinkly. Another has the thick, knobby surface of raw silk. [09: Under an orange-red gel, shadows and spots of brighter light, a straight and tidy row of pamphlets on the topic of sexual assault. The pamphlets on either end are partly sliced out of the frame. Topics include rape drugs, consent, the Central Alberta Sexual Assault Centre, an informational guide in French and one in English, and teens and relationships. [10: An anthropological study in hair care shows a formal array of hair care implements lying on a lightly-scratched mirror and cast under a yellow gel. A brush, several types of combs of different shapes and sizes (including a carved comb that looks like four hands lined up, fingers extended), a tiger’s eye barrette, and two seashell hair clips. Only a glimpse of each object’s reflection and a sliver of shadow are visible.] https://nkwestman.com/Pastoral-Calamity-2019 Mon, 10 Aug 2020 02:45:43 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/Pastoral-Calamity-2019 <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ab0d83c9d438e32f0c9ed1ade9ce50c75319a39671aa0a06414dc2df0aff1215/N.K.Westman-005.jpg" data-mid="79948949" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ab0d83c9d438e32f0c9ed1ade9ce50c75319a39671aa0a06414dc2df0aff1215/N.K.Westman-005.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/db58f614c818ebddbde1ca874a6123563ea9d5fb7f06daf7bd52729c47539894/N.K.Westman-006.jpg" data-mid="79947805" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/db58f614c818ebddbde1ca874a6123563ea9d5fb7f06daf7bd52729c47539894/N.K.Westman-006.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5585baf0ebf9b10a9a2ebbf3c1310e97696b1a5ba16dc69454cf054ffa54636e/N.K.Westman-007.jpg" data-mid="79948893" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5585baf0ebf9b10a9a2ebbf3c1310e97696b1a5ba16dc69454cf054ffa54636e/N.K.Westman-007.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/45358f77fdc964d5c62f5e2f936b09394449da3908817ee5dff9db4f07096563/N.K.Westman-009.jpg" data-mid="79949322" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/45358f77fdc964d5c62f5e2f936b09394449da3908817ee5dff9db4f07096563/N.K.Westman-009.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/22a84861bb5871648ee2dac8d6be1d9ce1fdf5e4d6e6b792ebc3b29707e65d02/N.K.Westman-010.jpg" data-mid="79949324" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/22a84861bb5871648ee2dac8d6be1d9ce1fdf5e4d6e6b792ebc3b29707e65d02/N.K.Westman-010.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/22a84861bb5871648ee2dac8d6be1d9ce1fdf5e4d6e6b792ebc3b29707e65d02/N.K.Westman-010.jpg" data-mid="79949324" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/22a84861bb5871648ee2dac8d6be1d9ce1fdf5e4d6e6b792ebc3b29707e65d02/N.K.Westman-010.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ab0d83c9d438e32f0c9ed1ade9ce50c75319a39671aa0a06414dc2df0aff1215/N.K.Westman-005.jpg" data-mid="79948949" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ab0d83c9d438e32f0c9ed1ade9ce50c75319a39671aa0a06414dc2df0aff1215/N.K.Westman-005.jpg" /> Pastoral | Calamity (2019) One New Work - Glenbow MuseumOctober 19, 2019 – January 5, 2020 One New Work Series - Glenbow Museum The Cucoloris and the Curtain in Nicole Kelly Westman’s Filmsby Nancy Tousley The juxtaposition of two film in Nicole Kelly Westman’s installation Pastoral | Calamity (2019) creates a visual and aural tone poem (1) on the intermittent stages of grief and mourning. Projected into the cocoon-like darkness of a gallery, for every sunset, we haven’t seen (2019) and for nights bathed in sodium vapour (2019) write their poetry with light and sound. A fluctuating stream of moving images held in a seemingly back-lit rectangle plays across the soft folds of a large curtain. Sounds from outside and life on the street fill the soundtracks. The room has a domestic feel. Two chairs are offered to viewers who want to sit down and take it in. The camera’s point of view is the artist’s point of view and, in a second doubling of vision, the camera’s point of view becomes the viewer’s point of view as the seer becomes absorbed by the work. It’s as if the viewer is looking out a window through the artist’s eyes. Westman’s films, at seven and 12 minutes, are short and made with the Super-8 system, one that is closely associated with both amateurs and artists. Among artists her work finds kinship with Canadian experimental filmmakers such as Ellie Epp and the multimedia artists Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson, all based in Vancouver, and Montreal filmmaker Caroline Monnet. Westman’s images are set in place of music to evocative scores of sounds collected in field recordings — wind, motorcycle, train, helicopter, rain, thunder, the clacking heels of a person running — composed by her frequent collaborator Kurtis Denne. The modus operandi of experimental or Avant-garde filmmaking is to overrule the mechanisms of the camera eye in favour of expressive vision. (2) Most often, in addition to working with 8 mm or 16 mm film, this involves using the camera and its materials and processes against their specifications. Techniques of this kind might include holding and moving the camera by hand; speeding up the motor or slowing it down while recording; over- or under-exposing the film; photographing through fog, rain, gels, unbalanced lights; using daylight film at night or vice versa and filming in low-key light. Dawn and dusk are the indistinct hours of half-light in which the senses and perceptions of time and place are prone to confusion. In for every sunset, we haven’t seen (2019) or for nights bathed in sodium vapour (2019), which are looped together here for the first time, day and night merge into a dreamlike atmosphere in which time is suspended in not-day and not-night. No narrative, no character, no plot intervenes or explains. The sun seen through a gel looks most like the moon. The moon becomes indistinguishable from a sodium vapour streetlamp. It is taken as given that montage makes legible the visual poetry of these images and that loss is a condition universally felt. What sense these films make is existential and emotional; it is also resonantly personal. Westman films through the lens of subjectivity. Although her subject is intangible, un-filmable except by substitution, she frames it in a setting based on her own physical and psychic space. Landscape as a mirror of the human psyche is a Romantic trope and no stranger to later art histories. Throughout her films, Westman immerses the viewer in what she sees, offering us aesthetic correlatives of her feelings: repeating images of light falling through tree branches, sheer-curtained windows, tinted images of trees, expanses of foliage, opaque red curtains, shadow play, glowing orbs and rocks amid water. “I know now that my mourning will be chaotic,” Roland Barthes writes in The Mourning Diaries, (3) on the seventh day following his mother’s death. The chaos arises from within the mourner who experiences an “indeterminacy of the senses.” (4) Westman also feels and portrays this sensory confusion of day and night, up and down, vertical and horizontal, stable and unsteady, real and unreal, which makes one’s new place in the world hard to navigate. The opening shots of for every sunset, we haven’t seen, the most meditative of the two films, are dreamy pools of trembling light. From a moment of calm, a jump cut to the window presages a storm that comes up quickly, gains intensity, climaxes and subsides to restored calm. The more turbulent for nights bathed in sodium vapour begins with looking up into the windblown canopy of a tree in a shot that swings more than 180 degrees to throw the world off balance. Then a tumult of images ensues like a fevered dream. Westman uses a number of effects, some already mentioned, both to evoke feeling and to give rich visual texture to the film, in tandem with motions that mirror the “jerks and surges” of unhappiness that Barthes describes. (5) She speeds up and slows down the film, executes dizzying vertical pans, holds gels in front of the lens, switches colour from hot to cool to dark as night, double exposes the film, jump cuts, photographs in low-key light, leaves in the scratches, dust and light flares, and along with tilting and swinging the hand-held camera, runs with it bobbing in her hands. Within the restless montage, a lone plane flies upward into a dark cloudy sky and a tumbleweed skittles and spins at the mercy of the wind. The soundtrack builds to an anxiety-producing tension that, like grief, doesn’t end. The film itself doesn’t end so much as stop when the spooled celluloid runs off the reel. The curtain functions both as an object, a screen for the projection, and a metaphorical image that repeats in the films. Slices of reality, uncovered and in focus, appear sporadically through narrow vertical openings in the filmed image of a curtain. It is a veil whose presence registers the separation between the real world on the outside of the room and the subjective responses of the aggrieved projected onto it from inside. Made from a photographer’s printed muslin backdrop, the curtain also makes a direct reference to photography and film that reveals these supposedly indexical mediums to be the magical and duplicitous agents of fictions. When the curtain is blown aside or slightly open, reality rushes in, but for Westman this is just another of the perceptual conceits that film and photography perform. In its essence every film is a special effect of still photography, animated by projection at 24 frames per second, which contains many other special effects. One of the partially revealed images to appear through separated curtains in for nights bathed in sodium vapour is a cuculoris. A simple device used in lighting for theatre, film and still photography, the cuculoris is basically a stencil that shapes light and shadow. The stencil is cut into a stiff material that simultaneously casts a shadow and allows light to pass through it in a pattern. Film noir cinematographers favoured the effect to create shadow silhouettes, venetian blind shadows and the effects of sunlight or moonlight passing through tree branches and windows. For the cuculorises she uses in the films Westman makes tracings of light, cast by sunlight or sodium vapour streetlamps, which she cuts out of plywood, zebrawood or cedar to create the natural effects of dappled light shining through leaves. Moving images of illumination found in the world, they parallel to the moving images made by light shining through projected celluloid film. One might say that for Westman the cuculoris and the curtain present the crux of the poetics of film, the projections of its illusions, and their interplay of fiction and reality. The cuculoris was the inspiration for the films in Pastoral | Calamity even where the device is not put to its intended use. The quivering pools of light at the beginning of for every sunset we haven’t seen were made by light falling through a window that was reflected by a mirror into the lens of the camera. Westman made her first cuculoris for the installation, Rose, Dear (2016), in the Walter Phillips Gallery Satellite Space at the Banff Centre. This cuculoris fronted a lightbox and had a poem inscribed on the wood — “it smells of sage out here like an old friend.” A film was screened on a nearby monitor and fir trees outside cast long shadows across the floor through coloured gel that covered large windows, an architectural curtain of glass extending from floor to ceiling. The various effects of light and shadow in the installation, elements of works that follow, united the place that Westman invoked in the film with the site of the installation, adding a layer of the real world to the world conjured by photography and memory. faux light falling on drawn drapes (2018), shown in the exhibition Fulhame’s Map at the Nanaimo Art Gallery in British Columbia, fused the effects of mottled light created with a cuculoris and the object upon which they were projected to produce a shimmering light-filled illusion. Technically it is a still image, rather than a film, but its matrix, a pale-pink satin/silk curtain, is a fluid material that embodies movement. To make the illusion, Westman set up a "hot light" on each side of the camera. In front of each light she mounted a cuculoris and in front of each cuculoris a coloured gel. Photographing the light projected through two sets of cuculorises and a rotation of Rosco coloured gels, she completed seven rolls of medium-format film from which came the images she had printed digitally on eight silk curtains. Following faux light falling on drawn drapes, a curtain becomes the surface on which Westman projects the films in a series of installations that appeared in rapid succession: for every sunset, we haven’t seen at the Dunlop Gallery, Regina, Sask. (March, 2019) and the Critical Distance Gallery, Images Festival, Toronto (April, 2019), and for nights bathed in sodium vapour at Western Front, Vancouver (May, 2019), in the installation cuculoris, a time machine for shadows. In the Naniamo exhibition faux light falling on drawn drapes were hung in doorways, with an opening in the centre, to welcome viewers across two thresholds in the gallery. At Western Front it was seen as one long continuous curtain. The installation Pastoral | Calamity includes two films, two mirror-and-gel backed cuculorises, two cuculoris drawings on yellow tracing paper, the photographer’s backdrop curtain and replicas of two modernist chairs. Westman made the tracings in the light falling through a lilac tree in Calgary. The drawings make a direct connection to place. The films are direct impressions of personal loss. Although they are rooted in the memory of what the grieving subject undergoes, they appear as if the feelings were fresh, happening in real time. This immediacy is the illusion of motion pictures and indexical photography, whose reality and artificiality are the installation’s context. Darkness and light filtered through moving images dissemble in favour of the illumination, both actual and conceptual, that turns them into poetry. Kaja Silverman writes that “the human psyche is another of the places where the photographic image develops.” (6) The psyche’s grief can be developed in discontinuous images that flow past as if in a stream of consciousness; moving images can be read visually and shared as if they were happening. In a well-wrought poem, and in Westman’s Pastoral | Calamity, a work whose subject is photography as much as grief, the means and the message are inseparably bound.&nbsp; Notes 1. “Tone poem” most often refers to an orchestral composition inspired by an extra-musical idea, story or mood to which the title alludes. As a non-narrative film style, it was pioneered in feature-length films by Godfrey Reggio who directed the Koyaanisqatsi (1982), scored by Philip Glass. 2. The North American forerunner in the use of celluloid film as an expressive artistic material was the American Stan Brakhage (1933–2003), an experimental filmmaker of the 1950s and ’60s. His classic theoretical statement Metaphors on Vision, originally written in 1960, was reissued by Anthology Film Archives/Light Industry in 2017. 3. Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010): 15. 4. Ibid., 14. 5. Ibid., 40.6. Kaja Silverman, The Miracle of Analogy or The History of Photography, Part 1 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, 2015): 65. REVIEWS:Nicole Kelly Westman at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary - for Akimblong by Maeve Hanna https://nkwestman.com/I-am-sorry-I-didn-t-call-a-poem-for-a-now-vacant-site Wed, 21 Aug 2019 19:49:13 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/I-am-sorry-I-didn-t-call-a-poem-for-a-now-vacant-site <img width="1587" height="1103" width_o="1587" height_o="1103" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2f319e063c445573b4e644342170e564ea0eea488f3bace99b99c461de49640a/Screen-Shot-2019-08-21-at-1.44.02-PM.png" data-mid="49057952" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2f319e063c445573b4e644342170e564ea0eea488f3bace99b99c461de49640a/Screen-Shot-2019-08-21-at-1.44.02-PM.png" /> <img width="1585" height="1110" width_o="1585" height_o="1110" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/27086e6f4f4e93f0a5dfd898fbd8a3f6b8dd192749915eef59be30602be3637b/Screen-Shot-2019-08-21-at-1.44.44-PM.png" data-mid="49057951" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/27086e6f4f4e93f0a5dfd898fbd8a3f6b8dd192749915eef59be30602be3637b/Screen-Shot-2019-08-21-at-1.44.44-PM.png" /> ABSTRACT&nbsp; A distinct aggregation / A dynamic equivalent / A generous ethic of invention: Six writers respond to six sculptures - Publication A distinct aggregation / A dynamic equivalent / A generous ethic of invention: Six writers respond to six sculptures - Audio A project by Aislinn Thomas with Anna Bowen, Angela Marie Schenstead, Crystal Mowry, Laura Burke, Catherine Frazee, Nicole Kelly Westman, and Shannon Finnegan August 8, 2019 – September 27, 2020 This commissioned work is available in two formats: as a sound-work available and through a broadsheet featuring audio transcriptions of each response as well as text drawings from the collaborative series, A seat at the table, a slice of the pie, the result of a dialogue between Aislinn Thomas and Shannon Finnegan about the practice of visual description. I am sorry I didn’t Call - A poem for a now - vancant siteresponding to Sharon Moodie’s I dont want a massage, I want a miracle (1989-2017) In the days when she stood here, she was bathed in golden hour dappled lightfrom fluttering shadows of swaying pines coniferous limbs dancing into an ever-exuberant setting sun. she stood beneath full moons and disappeared in the murky fog of forest fire smoke.she was cloaked in blankets of snow for many blizzarding wintersand again and again and again she was revealed by the melting of spring. but, now the only remnants are faded fraudulent rocks camouflaged in a mesh of grass and gravel.scattered amongst complimenting severed shards detached from their binding collage. like boulders balanced between glacial currents. no longer a part of the mountain that once held them.no longer so rigid with identifiable edges. no longer holding the purpose they once had. she weathered many tenuous storms resting upon a terrain of severe extremes.while she stood she held her space without the support structures bestowed to those around her. without the didactic without the curatorial contextwithout the records of maintenance in the addendum of condition reports. so, slowly and subtly she relinquished from her pebbled bed foundation. until her precariously ephemeral lifespan abruptly concluded.all that stands here now is impermanence as a question to the relevance of permanence permeates this site. a binary begins to formto segregate the alumni that remember her from the new residents that may never know she was here. for me, she became a marker for a moment in time recorded by a field of memory. a metaphor for the political capacities of resisting from the outside. a visual critique poignantly critical of the continuation of systemic inequalities an overtly feminine passageway that lasted only long enough to embrace some of us. she was once embossed with Venus of Willendorf replicasand Barbie busts. inscribed with text-based sentiments like ‘punk junk’ and curt curses like ‘fuck face’ slotted amongst ceramics scribed with concerns like ‘sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality’ or‘hierarchy is just their control device against free spirits.’you must trust me as I attempt to describe her aesthetic appeal as she is not googleable nowjust as she was not commissionable then. I suppose for some she lost her lustre after twenty-nine years of remaining asa mosaic, a memento, a site marker. a signal of resistance until finally she was but a resignation. she was a visual balance of rhythmic chaos. in complement to the complexities of ever-evolving theories relational to feminism. recorded in recent archives, are documents depicting her final celebration.under the moon and amongst many friendsshe was gazed upon and rested on. as they gathered together to sit on blankets they talked of gossip and then of artwith the origins of their questto share in a love for the poeticto sit with her and wait in these moments of finality to praise her for her long-standing commitments to feminismto learn she had a name we never knew and never used. colloquially she was known as the feminist arch.but her truest name was, I don’t want a massage, I want a miracle.in thinking of this naming I lust for an era that desires considered consent one that is mindfully cognizant of the overt consolation in offering touch over tangential change. I too await this forlorn miracle as I fend off mediocre offers of suggestive caress commonly exchanged in the prowl of power. I sit where you once were in an area now sanctioned off for construction supplies.I begin plucking from the earth what remains, assembling a constellation of ceramics in my palm. a faded yellow a brushstroked orange a swirling lilac a black wave jutting onto a sunset pink an oscillation of sage and evergreen. I think of this modest foraged collectionfinding its way into a new arch. an arch with varying intersectionsan arch built by the hands of many an arch depicting the temporality of listening an arch that resists the monumental.what I want is a miracle but what I’ve got is a mirage. https://nkwestman.com/cuculoris-a-time-machine-for-shadows Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:08:23 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/cuculoris-a-time-machine-for-shadows <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b46d6a222a8a79ddc7754cf6f519b268e5222b62c04ccba58c8e4c30d4e2279/wf_westman-03.jpg" data-mid="49136260" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6b46d6a222a8a79ddc7754cf6f519b268e5222b62c04ccba58c8e4c30d4e2279/wf_westman-03.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ad00438cb8930b644e4f226bde8d5825daaf0cce22b8c2eca47be6747d6d69b4/wf_westman-04.jpg" data-mid="49136261" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ad00438cb8930b644e4f226bde8d5825daaf0cce22b8c2eca47be6747d6d69b4/wf_westman-04.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4ad94d086f7c06f5b0f2f6a61290cffcc46c55fdaf2aadbcd6465ff4e28604cc/wf_westman-06.jpg" data-mid="49136263" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4ad94d086f7c06f5b0f2f6a61290cffcc46c55fdaf2aadbcd6465ff4e28604cc/wf_westman-06.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7d54f4b2d890c7aba04e4315df351e57ca368aa0d191bdc9640c17698e1568da/wf_westman-07.jpg" data-mid="49136265" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7d54f4b2d890c7aba04e4315df351e57ca368aa0d191bdc9640c17698e1568da/wf_westman-07.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b28d36268a65aaa5aa58c82189f8cfeacf96f8f8ad77cfed714352b871d87e17/wf_westman-02.jpg" data-mid="49136731" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b28d36268a65aaa5aa58c82189f8cfeacf96f8f8ad77cfed714352b871d87e17/wf_westman-02.jpg" /> <img width="1296" height="864" width_o="1296" height_o="864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/45f1c26c0d27baa17f5b801ea8cef5a2d8dc9d640c89ab3abcd6c9a22b594eee/wf_westman-11A.jpg" data-mid="49136809" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/45f1c26c0d27baa17f5b801ea8cef5a2d8dc9d640c89ab3abcd6c9a22b594eee/wf_westman-11A.jpg" /> <img width="1296" height="864" width_o="1296" height_o="864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4b7740d3f607744e317c96261343ba3f7b6ee7110b647dff5250d9b27221c51f/wf_westman-09A.jpg" data-mid="49136329" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4b7740d3f607744e317c96261343ba3f7b6ee7110b647dff5250d9b27221c51f/wf_westman-09A.jpg" /> <img width="1482" height="988" width_o="1482" height_o="988" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aec7654f579c70038d10477ca1427756def21a0b8e51209e416bff4e8de7e8f2/wf_westman-10A.jpg" data-mid="49136808" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/aec7654f579c70038d10477ca1427756def21a0b8e51209e416bff4e8de7e8f2/wf_westman-10A.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ca54cb018ab27687b625204dc23b76e52ddc4106592d7d0147bf40a0b240aca0/wf_westman-05.jpg" data-mid="49136262" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ca54cb018ab27687b625204dc23b76e52ddc4106592d7d0147bf40a0b240aca0/wf_westman-05.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/61c418c6cbaa6ec4741b18ddaa8e36ec4fadcd967dac18aee52b43c0335eb435/wf_westman-01.jpg" data-mid="49136258" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/61c418c6cbaa6ec4741b18ddaa8e36ec4fadcd967dac18aee52b43c0335eb435/wf_westman-01.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c43662da636a98d79f2f59b1cd104573f3bd0764b7930776be0b2a211bb12fa9/wf_westman-08.jpg" data-mid="49136560" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c43662da636a98d79f2f59b1cd104573f3bd0764b7930776be0b2a211bb12fa9/wf_westman-08.jpg" /> cuculoris, a time machine for shadows - (2019) Western FrontMay 31 – Jul 5, 2019 Through the process of working I hesitate to say this began with light, as invoking “light” alongside “beginnings” feels so biblical and there’s not much about Nicole Kelly Westman’s work that I’d classify as biblical. That said, it did begin with light—specifically, dappled sunlight in the late summer afternoon. We were talking in a second floor apartment and the warm late summer/early fall September light was streaming in through the large west facing windows. She was sharing with me some of her recent work in the studio that was focused on dappled light, that soft shadowed light that filters through foliage. We talked about how, during the solar eclipse that summer, a miniature projection of the eclipse was projected onto the ground through the leaves. There’s something about dappled light, the way it can mark place and time. Light is such a temporal, slippery substance. Is light even a substance? Westman had been looking for ways to mark this: the dappled light, the hues of sunsets, the warm glow of an afternoon. Film and photography provided one avenue. Westman had been pointing cameras at patterns of dappled light that she observed on walls, curtains, and sidewalks. Using Super 8 film, the temporality of light was captured, and the pronounced grain and vivid colors of the Ektachrome stock heightened the dramatic effect of the shadows. A film could collect all of these moments—from the mornings and the evenings, the harsh cold light of winter and the warm summer sun—and string them together in a cavalcade of reflections and refractions. Where motion picture film captured color and movement, it lacked the physical, albeit ethereal presence that characterizes this kind of light. To recreate that physicality, Westman constructed cuculorises. A cuculoris, as she explained to me, is a flat sheet of material—often cut from wood or stiff cardboard—that is placed in front of a light to cast a shadow pattern. A cuculoris is similar to, but should not be confused with a gobo (a pattern cut in metal and placed in between the lamp and focusing lens of a theatrical light). While a gobo casts a very hard lined shadow, a cuculoris generally casts a softer edged pattern of light and shadow. It’s origins date back to cinema in the 1920s when a cinematographer needed to tone down the hot spots from lighting on white clothing or fabrics in a scene. The uneven and random shadow patterns were meant to more closely approximate natural light in the studio environment full of bright artificial lighting. Natural as the effect may be, a cuculoris remains an artificial lighting instrument. Though used to mitigate the harsh, direct glare of a 12,000 watt film studio lamp, its implementation still manifests as a make-believe shadow. It is but another apparatus of illusion used to help lend some sense of the real in film and photography. This interplay between the real and the artificial, the represented and recreated, the corporeal and the intangible, is at the core of Westman’s work in cuculoris, a time machine for shadows. As the starting point for the exhibition (well, not the first thing you encounter, but the first thing Westman and I determined as the foundation for the show), Westman designed a pair of cuculorises to fit over the east facing windows in the gallery wall. For many years, those windows weren’t even visible in the gallery. Original to the 1922 building, the windows were covered up in the mid-1980s, some years after the transition of this room from a social gathering space to the more conventional white cube format it still maintains today. In 2011, Sophie Bélair Clément learned of the walled in windows and requested that one be uncovered for her eponymous exhibition here. After which, the newly exposed window along with its sill and moulding (recreated to match other windows in the building), remained a part of the galleries architecture. Bélair Clément’s intervention only excavated one of a pair of adjoining windows though, the window on the right remaining behind drywall until it was pointed out to Westman in advance of this show. If we’re to take as the subject (or maybe it’s better to say the substance) of this exhibition to be light, then it stood to reason that we must open up the gallery to as much light as we could. That meant we needed to cut loose the bound in window, restoring the pair of windows that hadn’t been in the gallery since 1985. Where the windows themselves are time capsules of Western Front’s architectural transformation over the decades, Westman’s two cuculorises function similarly across temporal distances. The patterns cut into fir plywood are not random patterns, rather they’re traced directly from tree shadows in Vancouver. Scribed from light passing through trees, these cuculorises cast the shadow of something that might have been here before this building was here. In all of this, I come back to the question: is light even a substance? Scientifically, it sits somewhere in between wave and particle, exhibiting properties of both. We can’t hold it, but we can feel it, though how we feel it is more closely related to its properties as wave (heat) rather than as particle (mass). As a wave it travels across distances, collapsing space with its speed. It permeates, streams in through windows, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside. Though light has qualities that we associate with land—prairie light, northwest coast light, mountain light—it is less bound in by the carving up of land into property. What are the implications in considering light as both intrinsically tied to place, but also persistently obfuscating the territorial boundaries that complicate our relationship to place. Westman’s work in this exhibition—film, photographs, and sculptures—all consider this duality of light as a thing that is not a thing, both material and immaterial. Here, light passes through, it permeates, it reflects, it is felt, but will always resist any attempts at holding onto it. EXHIBITION TEXT: Pablo de Ocampo CURATED BY: Pablo de Ocampo for Western Front Gallery&nbsp; MAY, 2019&nbsp;REVIEWS:Nicole Kelly Westman- Reviews- Western Front, for Canadian Art by April ThompsonNicole Kelly Westman at Western Front, Vancouver - Reviews - for Akimbo by&nbsp;Justina Bohach https://nkwestman.com/a-slight-space-amidst Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:25:55 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/a-slight-space-amidst <img width="2112" height="1479" width_o="2112" height_o="1479" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/463ff2dad3f957afff406c3f80187f92981b710165f6153b269dec90a044be10/Screen-Shot-2019-08-08-at-5.28.16-PM.png" data-mid="49060674" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/463ff2dad3f957afff406c3f80187f92981b710165f6153b269dec90a044be10/Screen-Shot-2019-08-08-at-5.28.16-PM.png" /> a slight space amidst - (2019) Scattering Nicole Kelly Westman at Critical Distance&nbsp; The afternoon sun passes across my bookshelves and I have been sitting here trying to describe the smell of a beeswax candle. It’s somewhat dusty and sweet, but also sharp, prickly—maybe not unlike a piece of ginger growing stale and wrinkled on a kitchen counter. A quiet, bright, dense smell. A scent with a skin. It warms under my fingertips and leaves a gentle squeaky residue.&nbsp; Beeswax candles, I’ve heard that they neutralize the air—negative ions, right? I imagine the air crackling silently in the aura of a candle’s flame, maybe something close to the vibratory grain in a projection of Super8 film.&nbsp; How did I get here? Nicole’s work has been prompting me to think about how I spend time alone, amongst my things; how my eyes recalibrate to the slowly-changing light in my apartment. A day without talking to anyone. A day spent watching, reading, writing notes. A day that can feel restorative, or lonely, or safe. + A short story by Lydia Davis, titled Tropical Storm: “Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become ‘better organized.’” + Just now, I googled “why does the sky sometimes seem mauve just after a thunderstorm?” I have a photo on my phone of my partner looking out the west-facing windows of our apartment, her head a dark silhouette against the luminous violet churn of the sky. I learn that it’s a process called scattering—light from the sun meeting the molecules of the atmosphere. Wavelengths of colour scatter at different rates, given their lengths: blue and violet light are the shortest, so they disperse in the air the most. However, on a pleasant day, the sky appears blue since our eyes cannot perceive violet light as clearly. We are, after all, creatures perpetually assuming, grasping, filling in gaps; just because something is illegible to our bodies, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, swirling in the distance. After a storm, the sky is so saturated—clouds are low, dense and potent with moisture. Storms make the very stuff of air feel more abundant somehow; soupier, like a thicker weave. In saturated air, there’s more matter to disperse spectral colours, and violet’s short rays are amplified, brought into focus. That a thunderstorm operates like a pair of prescription lenses, the atmosphere adjusting our vision to something otherwise diffuse or unclear—I like this idea. In these moments, I’m reminded that purple is such an electric colour, charged and vast and full of possibilities that I cannot wholly reckon with. There have been so many storms this year. + On the phone, Nicole tells me about building a cucoloris for a project and at first, I hum with recognition, before turning back on myself. Sorry, can you repeat that? A cucoloris. A what? She tells me that it’s one of those strange, niche words that is so mutable no one can agree on its spelling. Cucoloris, cuculoris, kookaloris, cookalorus, kook, cookie, coo-koo. I think of birdsong, that first warm morning of the year when you wake to soft chirping in the tree just beyond your bedroom window. That bird was probably there the morning before, but this is the first time you take notice. It’s a word that fluctuates; as diffuse as its process. A cucoloris produces soft patterns of light and shadow in a photographer or filmmaker’s studio: a stencil hand-cut with haphazard shapes. Held at a significant distance from its light source, a cucoloris produces patterns that are soft and amorphous, like sunlight dappled through the branches of a tree. A staged environment that approximates what’s “natural” while rendering it transactional, generalized. As Nicole tells me, it’s not any one tree, just the implication of tree: a simple equation in globular forms. When faced with something general, we are quick to rush in with our specificity. In these contexts, what can natural lighting feel like? How does it prompt memory, build trust, serenity, awe, intimacy, foreboding? It’s a carved-out space for old sensations, made seemingly fresh and newly possible.&nbsp; + During a clear day, I squint out the window; I pull the curtains to dampen the sun. At night, I relish those moments when unforeseen colours crackle on the insides of my closed eyelids, shimmering like caked dust on the windowsills of a sunlit apartment. I try to find language for these colours, but I cannot. After all, they are electrical charges produced by my retinas as they rest. All interior, they have no equivalent beyond the threshold of my skin.&nbsp; Nicole films dappled light through the gentle wave of a curtained window, another delicately-covered threshold, more blooms of ambiguous colour. The thrum of her soundtrack—thunder, birdsong, low ambient tones—meets the noise of blood pumping in ears, breath rising and falling. The longer I sit here, I grow confused about my vantage point: I look through a window, a laptop, a curtain, a camera, my glasses, my corneas, the entirety of a body. I look inwards and outwards at once. + From Maggie Nelson’s Bluets: “38. For no one really knows what colour is, where it is, even whether it is. (Can it die? Does it have a heart?) Think of a honeybee, for instance, flying into the folds of a poppy: it sees a gaping violet mouth, where we see an orange flower and assume that it’s orange, that we’re normal.” + The mercurial, amber-gold crackle of Rosco gels on Super8: I’m seeing Nicole’s colours throughout my environment now. That half-used beeswax candle (dusty, golden, wise); a fading bruise on my thigh (blue-green, muddy, cosmic); the yellowing leaves of an under-watered houseplant (dry, sickly, accusatory). It’s interesting when the boundary between what you’re watching and what you’re living starts to become translucent; like excess light passing through gauzy fabric. Like a cucoloris, coloured gel lighting is a careful wager between the so-called artificial and the natural. The one stage lighting trick I know is that a synthetic colour can be made to seem more realistic if paired with its opposite: orange or amber light becomes less harsh when given a small dose of blue. It becomes dimensional; somehow, it contains more. I imagine this trick works because seeing light in the world means taking in so many variances and contradictions, visible or not: like what’s unseen alongside blue wavelengths scattered across the dense matter of the sky. The impossible largeness—of perception, of sensation, of memory—held within a spectrum. + One last fact that I’ve learned about the colours in the sky: the fiery tones of a sunset are produced through sheer distance. As it sets, the sun is at its furthest from your vantage point, its light has the longest to travel, giving more opportunity for the longest wavelengths—orange, red—to scatter into the stuff of the air. I find it strange to think of red as a colour that denotes a separation, given its associations with passion, violence, and so on. All things relating to closeness, to the immediacy of a body. But maybe that’s all the more appropriate, somehow. Like warm, amber light that contains a kernel of its opposite, maybe there’s more distance folded into my body than I initially anticipated.&nbsp; + On the phone, Nicole asks me: “what does it mean when you need to draw the blinds and turn away from the most beautiful part of the day?” I still do not have a clear answer. Yet, as I watch the muted sunlight inch slowly across the surfaces of my apartment, I see more than I realize. FRAGMENTARY ESSAY: Daniella Sanader CURATED BY: Steffanie Ling for IMAGES FESTIVAL PRESENTED BY:&nbsp;Critical Distance APRIL, 2019 FOR EVERY SUNSET, WE HAVEN'T SEEN (7:15) - VIMEO LINK IMAGES ARTIST TALK: NICOLE KELLY WESTMAN - VIMEO LINK https://nkwestman.com/on-pause Thu, 22 Aug 2019 23:39:59 +0000 nicole kelly westman https://nkwestman.com/on-pause <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5cfe997ec073754d9ce47175b5d0673d8654c778d4e465e226e053f720acebee/OnPause_01.jpg" data-mid="49137478" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5cfe997ec073754d9ce47175b5d0673d8654c778d4e465e226e053f720acebee/OnPause_01.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b81d8e8acf9db4880fc245257f1fc1ea276154baad8d9e0d5fb51b27f216bd2a/OnPause_02.jpg" data-mid="49137479" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b81d8e8acf9db4880fc245257f1fc1ea276154baad8d9e0d5fb51b27f216bd2a/OnPause_02.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a55736dc0188db759f5a9baa40844490a8bd281cc241f3bcf9637389bfb5e822/OnPause_03.jpg" data-mid="49137480" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a55736dc0188db759f5a9baa40844490a8bd281cc241f3bcf9637389bfb5e822/OnPause_03.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/372e3852ab9c750fd75b0d39f901fbe0de8a47b19f383f90f9868a7fa6aed1f4/OnPause_04.jpg" data-mid="49137481" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/372e3852ab9c750fd75b0d39f901fbe0de8a47b19f383f90f9868a7fa6aed1f4/OnPause_04.jpg" /> <img width="2700" height="1800" width_o="2700" height_o="1800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8d28d531d02889d9bed803cf4f2b1b6c4815f9c9b4b7d490caf2ff7303f59758/OnPause_05.jpg" data-mid="49137482" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8d28d531d02889d9bed803cf4f2b1b6c4815f9c9b4b7d490caf2ff7303f59758/OnPause_05.jpg" /> &nbsp; an irregular reflection (2019) cnc'd custom typeface on rose gold +&nbsp;pink fluorescent acrylic wall mounted signthreshold for an era considering consent (2019)engraved custom typeface on&nbsp;pink fluorescent acrylic sandwich board On Pause reflects on broad ideas of caesural pauses. A caesura is a break… an interruption… a cut. A space for thought. A momentary breath. Articulating a connection between two phrases, a caesura is a literary and musical device that creates emphasis or provides respite. Importantly, caesurae disobey established patterns and detour natural rhythms. How can we apply this musical and poetic concept to our lives and embrace times of pause as a way to find connection between two moments? Artworks in On Pause express notions of pause indirectly, as a reference through subjects or processes. Some offer an invitation to celebrate the in-between, the interlude and anticipation. Others, highlight mindlessness and the perils of procrastination. Together in chorus, the artwork in this exhibition echo and reverberate off one another to provide a refuge and immersive space in which the viewer can enter and… linger. EXHIBITION : On Pause CURATED BY: Katarina Veljovic MAY, 2019&nbsp;