Diane Roy: The Deep and the Shallows

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Diane Roy, "Umbilicus," 2014

recycled material and crochet. (photo courtesy of artist)

Opening Reception: July 8, 6:30pm

Diane Roy: The Deep and the Shallows brings together selections from forty years of the artist’s work. The exhibition focuses on Roy drawing inspiration from West Coast marine life to create elaborate three-dimensional forms.

Crochet, knitting, and weaving are the most common techniques used in these sculptures. While Roy sometimes dyes her objects, she also frequently leaves the materials in their raw state, giving them a strange and ethereal quality.

Primarily working in cotton over the years, Roy has branched into other materials including synthetic and recycled fibres in the past decade. At the centre of this exhibition is the colossal tapestry of a life-size blue whale’s head titled The Magnificent. Visitors are invited to measure themselves to the largest mammal to exist on earth. Created entirely with the artist’s own hands over the course of two years of work, this new large-scale artwork floats over an array of sculptures and wall hangings situated in the Gallery space.

“The sculptures and tapestry created for this exhibition evoke the likeness and needlework forms of ocean corals, sea anemones, urchins, and shells,” says Jordan Strom, the Gallery Curator of Exhibitions and Collections. “Although her shapes often mimic the skeletal forms of the ocean, their softness and abstract features signal a playful sensibility that is different from the hard and spiky surfaces that were their original inspiration.”

The gentle tactile quality of her materials challenge modern sculpture’s more heroic materials such as steel and bronze, while the titles of works such as Neptune’s Ear hook in her mythological vision for these resonant objects. 

Yet, despite Roy’s deep historical references, Roy’s sculptures and tapestries address deteriorating ocean health. Artworks such as The Curtain of Death and Devious Snare draw on fishing culture, modelling the form and shape of fishing nets, while simultaneously, pointing to the lasting harm that the industrialized fishing industry has had on depletion of fish stock and climate change’s effects on coral reefs.