Image Credits: Courtesy of the artist.

Main Gallery

Shovelling Piles

Artist

Marlene Jess

Exhibition Dates:

January 4, 2020

- February 22, 2020

Opening Reception:

January 10, 2020 7:00 pm

Marlene Jess considers her working class upbringing critical to her artistic inquiry. In Shovelling Piles, Jess explores self-initiated physical labour through shovelling. Utilizing a dissatisfaction with her participation in advanced capitalism as a starting point, Jess draws connections between the futility of shovelling piles as an action and the viewer’s positionality within capitalist society. Jess views movement, physicality, and bodily presence as sites of agency and momentary emancipation. Through the completion of self-initiated physical labour, Jess seeks to explore something other than a traditional notion of productivity. As Jess shovels in pursuit of embodied knowledge, we might consider the potential of having power under this homogenous system and what it means to hold agency and resist.

Artist Biography:

Marlene Jess is a fifth generation French-Canadian settler currently situated on unceded First Nations Territory of the Lekwungen, Coast Salish, and WSÁNEĆ peoples called Saanich. It is located on what is now known as southern Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest. Jess recently completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, B.C., and has completed projects and presented work in Canada at venues such as Media Net (Victoria, B.C.), The Ministry of Casual Living (Victoria, B.C.), Harcourt House (Edmonton, Alberta), Open Space (Victoria, B.C.), The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (B.C.), The Khyber (Halifax, Nova Scotia), and in Portland, Oregon at Sea Change Gallery and Launchpad Gallery.