Event Details
Join us on Saturday November 14 at 2pm CT for a virtual artist talk with Neah Kelly. This artist talk is presented in conjunction with Playground Chitchat, a two-person exhibition of Kelly’s and Bram Keast’s work. Playground Chitchat is on view from October 30 – December 4, 2020.
Martha Street Studio is currently closed as of November 1, 2020. Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here. Visit the exhibition page to view documentation of Playground Chitchat.
This artist talk is free to attend and open to the public. ASL interpretation is available by request. Requests must be submitted by 10am CT on Thursday, November 12 by emailing askmartha@printmakers.m.bca or calling 204-779-6253.
To access this virtual artist talk, join the Zoom meeting at 2pm on Saturday November 14 by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/j/94530949714 or by joining the meeting using this meeting ID: 945 3094 9714. You do not need to download Zoom ahead of time, but you may do so at https://zoom.us. This event will be recorded–please have your video turned off if you prefer not to be included in the recording.
Read mel monoceros‘ Spells Cast, a response to Playground Chitchat here.
Neah Kelly is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice incorporates printmaking and drawing, often recycling these prints into hand-sewn paper sculptures, installation, and bookbinding. She has exhibited broadly, participating in shows at Woman Made Gallery (Chicago), Site: Brooklyn (New York), and IPCNY (New York). Recent activities include a two-person show at Atelier Circulaire (Montréal), and residencies at KKV Grafik Printmaking Workshop (Malmö, Sweden), the Bonnie McComb Kreye residency (Victoria, BC), and Martha Street Studio (Winnipeg, MB). This year she’ll be participating in a solo-show at Centre3 (Hamilton, ON) this two-person exhibition at Martha Street Studio, and the collaborative project @grammarschoolrules produced during the Collab-19 residency through Artengine (Ottawa, ON) and @enmasseproject with @ambivalentlyyours. She holds a BFA from Concordia University (2014), and an MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University (2018). She currently resides in Hamilton, ON.
Learn more about Kelly’s work through her website, www.neahkelly.com, and through Instagram at @neahkelly and @grammarschoolrules.
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous support.
Artist Statement:
What happens when we continually draw material from the same source over and over again? It becomes a cyclical progression that comes to speak about the creative process. Using three imagined shapes as a point of origin, I work within a set of natural and self-imposed constraints to reimagine and reinterpret my imagery. This process gives birth to endless variations that morph and evolve in order to open up new subsets of inquiry. Each set of shapes are repeated and reimagined through a variety of media, from 2D to 3D. I then circle back, creating a new generation of shapes that manifest from these translations. In this way it has become an elaborate and evolving form of imaginative play. These objects are all connected–though disguised through a variety of methods, they all share a visual lineage. It is a game with myself to be constantly pushing against these limits and constraints, always with the objective to surprise myself with a new iteration–one that can exist within such a strict premise. It is a game between myself and the viewer, to see if they are willing and able to piece the process back together, to connect the dots. In short, it becomes a form of play, an activity that transcends the individual and is common to all.
In its totality, it is a conceptual game that addresses ideas of creativity, the integral necessity of play, and how play, constraints, and rules, can act as an impetus and idea generator. All these ensuing images, objects, permutations are evidence of this personal form of imaginative play – they are not the story in and of themselves. Together, through their interactions, they form the story, which is one of complexity, nonsense, playfulness, and the chaos and joy that come with creative invention.
