September 10 – October 10, 2021

(Small Gallery)

Kitty Blandy

BEING

There is always a body in my work; which has as much to do with being in a body, as looking at a body. My study is driven principally by ontological curiosity; enquiring what it is to ‘be’.  

I work largely using the conventional methods of drawing, relief and sculpture as an analytical act of somatic note taking.

My approach and response to this subject connects the ideologies of biocentrism and modernism – perhaps one could call it bio-modernism. I share with the biocentrist’s thesis that all living entities are equally valid. As a result of childhood immersion, modernism’s search for new forms of expression in the early 20th century, that emphasized essential qualities and truth to materials, has influenced the nature of my work. The focus of my art practice is situated within current discourses including: the body as site of sensation and consciousness; how being in a body feels physically and metaphysically; environmental and humanistic theology; human/animal empathy, and extinction.  

There is a physical sympathy with our fellow creatures that informs my observations. Human anthropomorphizing of animals is evidence of our need to rationalize the connection we have with them. All tetrapod, four-limbed vertebrate, body forms have the same relative structure with bilateral skeletal frames that are ubiquitous to this superclass; and share a body structure essentially identical to our own. The massive forms of large mammals parallel our own, triggering a somatic understanding within us. This association or recognition is a signifier for empathic concern, not just in terms of our global destruction of species and environment, but to ourselves, to each other.

The process of examining the homologous human/animal body requires an inquiry of finding, both through empirical observation and physical experience. My recent work has touched on the theory of recapitulation and embryological parallelism; observations of comparative anatomy; and the significance of teeth in the human/animal.

Over the past decade my work has touched on human-animal reflective relationships, specifically the “use” of the animal as a narcissistic trope. It is this central tenet that has urged me to present this proposal for an exhibition of my work that communicates a common human trait.

The SCAC would like to thank our generous sponsors who make our ongoing work possible: the SCAC Membership, the District of Sechelt, the BC Arts Council, the SC Community Forest Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Sunshine Coast Foundation and the Sunshine Coast Credit Union.