Delightfully Deceptive

Vancouver artist Connie Sabo plays with our concepts of story and material.

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As I enter the massive lobby of the HSBC Bank in downtown Vancouver, Alan Storey’s Pendulum sways in perpetual motion. To the left, Connie Sabo’s delightful mesh constructions hang suspended above the floor. The Pendulum Gallery is the venue for Sabo’s new installation, information + impression, on view until Feb. 4.

The exhibition consists of three works and, at first, Sabo’s central piece, information + impression, flanked on either side by Caravan and Memes, seems lost in the cavernous space. But as I walk in and around the mesh columns, I become engaged. Sabo studied architecture for two years before enrolling in the fine arts program at Emily Carr University and it shows. The drop and the sweep of the material creates many perspectives and much to look at. 

“I’ve always loved architecture,” says Sabo. “I love that sense of being able to build and construct and create an environment.”

The work evokes a nautical environment, perhaps fishing nets hanging out to dry. Eleven red spheres on the floor are reminiscent of buoys put aside after the day’s catch.

But Sabo says her pieces go beyond referencing West Coast culture.

“It’s about how things move through time,” she says. “It’s about the meaning of growth and life.”

 A larger sphere next to the buoys is broken.

“The broken one represents decay,” she says. “It’s about the life cycle because after things break down, they nourish what needs to grow.”

Sabo's constructions look like yarn, when, in fact, they're made from strips of newspaper laboriously ripped, twisted and woven into mesh. You can tell by looking at the bottom ends. Sabo started working this way in art school when recycling was popular and newspaper was plentiful. It’s a slow but meditative process that allows time to reflect.

“I’m thinking about what stories are in the paper but what stories are not in the paper,”  she says. “So, it’s about what is present and what is absent.” 

Sabo is essentially transforming a medium that conveys information into another medium – art – and creating a new story from those originally communicated by the newspaper.

Caravan, for instance, billows across a wall, and may evoke different responses in viewers. For Sabo, the wavy form initially suggested camel humps and to her that meant travel. The spheres became rest stops along the way.

“I started thinking about the Silk Road and how information would be passed way back when and how people would get their information,” she says, “It would be through people travelling and word of mouth. It’s about that movement of information.”

Memes, on the other hand, is a series of small constructions inspired by drawings in which she explores the nature of line.

“I love gestural mark-making,” she says.

When long lines are contorted into shapes, lines become knots. Thus, we have Memes. ■  

Connie Sabo, information + impression, at the Pendulum Gallery in Vancouver from Jan. 4 to Feb. 4, 2022.

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Pendulum Gallery

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