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Allyson Clay: Imaginary Standard Distance

Allyson Clay. Untitled III 1997. Self portrait.

Allyson Clay (BFA NSCAD 1980, MFA UBC 1985) lives in Vancouver. At the outset of her career, she painted abstract landscapes and strangely alienated figurative subjects. By the 1990s, she had begun to interrogate painting as a representational practice, using mixed-media, text, and faux-veneered surfaces in conjunction with painted ones. This exhibition provides a mid-career glimpse of her work since 1988.

Retaining her focus on the urban female subject, Clay combines photo-based imagery with video and painting to open this subject position to viewers. As Karen Henry observes, the artist "records the juncture of private and public space in a surveillance society, working the margin between curiosity and voyeurism."

Special Events
This exhibition was presented in connection with the Halifax-wide forum, About Painting.

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