Women of the Forest
"Woodswomen" from Women of the Forest
Exhibition at Argyle Fine Art, Halifax, Nova Scotia: July 24-August 10
A collaborative series of work by artists Elizabeth Kenneday and Susan Malmström will have a debut exhibition at Argyle Fine Art Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia from July 24 through August 10, 2009.
Women of the Forest is a series of digitally produced pigment ink prints on paper based on the artists’ shared interest in fairy tales, feminism, and the disappearing wilderness. Fantasy elements woven throughout the images allow them to explore unsettling content in a compelling fashion. Informing the theme is the fact that both of them have chosen to live in rugged environments largely surrounded by forestland that can prove harsh at times — Northern California’s eastern Sierra Nevada and rural Nova Scotia — and that both were born and spent their formative years in urban/suburban Southern California (perhaps not coincidentally, home base to the epicenters of modern manufactured fantasy: Hollywood and Disneyland).
A desire to collaborate on a series despite being separated by thousands of miles led the artists to work together via email, with each digital image built layer upon layer. There were no limits as to what each artist could add to her layer before returning it to the other, and an image was considered a finished work of art by consensus. The images are meant to appear both realistic and dreamlike, prompting narratives within individual viewers’ own self-identity.
Argyle Fine Art Gallery is located at 1869 Upper Water Street, Halifax, 902-425-9456, or visit www.argylefa.tk.
