Rande Cook and Carollyne Yardley: Shapeshifting

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Rande Cook and Carollyne Yardley, "Moon Mask," 2017

oil and acrylic on panel, 36” diameter

Opening reception April 27, 5-8, pm

Shapeshifting is the second collaboration of which brings together two unique artists, Rande Cook and Carollyne Yardley, who share a passion for celebrating new ideas, works, and concepts about art. This collaborative effort is an aesthetic response to the relationships and exchanges between native and non-native communities, and how these relationships are healing and flourishing through reconciliation agendas.

Shapeshifting builds on these artists’ history of creative fusion they initiated in their two-person exhibition Ravenous (2014), which used personal identities, humour, and storytelling to engage and remind viewers that art is alive, influenced and constantly changing.

For this exhibition, Cook and Yardley drew inspiration from traditional Kawkwaka’wakw First Nation origin stories and cosmology, creating a visual dialogue between the artists’ own unique concepts about creation and space-time to describe an interest in the ongoing investigation into the animation of the human existence.

The concept of “shape-shifting” includes allegories for understanding adaption, the role of balance, and the necessity of bringing traditional forms of northwest coast design to the forefront of contemporary art. The result of their collaboration is an energetic body of work that poetically exhibits the tension and synchronicity inherent in creation of entirely new visual and material forms.

The works extend beyond simplistic expressions of hybridity whereby histories or visuality are sutured in material form. Rather they are the products of deep deconstruction by the artists of assumed knowledge of both western and indigenous art histories, spiritualities, and experiences. The body of work brings a new line to bear on the role contemporary art plays in intercultural dialogues of cultural histories and shared futures.