Unsurprising Geographies: Y Level 2006

‘But when we are face to face with things themselves- if we fix upon a face, the corner of a wall- does it not sometimes happen that we abandon ourselves to what we see?’

Y-Level  exhibits the work of five emerging Atlantic artists, all of them recent graduates of NSCAD University: David Court and Andrea Williamson, Robin McCullough, Maya Pasternak, and William Robinson.  This exhibition “Unsurprising Geographies” asked the artists to examine personal relationships to familiar and habitual geographies and the interconnectedness of terrains.

Geography is something that locates and fashions nostalgia and maybe asks us back. It produces familiarity—and in so doing creates meaning for us. A geography also brings with it something that is not obvious or predicted from the circumstances in which it exists.

The exhibition Unsurprising Geographies brings the works of the artists’ acknowledged geographies together in a gallery space. The works examine architectural domains, negotiate issues of speed and progress, consider interpersonal activities in solid masses of undifferentiated landscapes, and navigate the space of personal narratives in public geographies. 

Any recognition involves creating a knowing distance and alienation. When subtracting monotonous and unrefreshed ways, a presence might be revealed. This ‘unseeable’ defers habituation, regards its presence with a new passion.  What one preserves and betrays by memory is alerted.  What is really there? One can identify with love, fear, and curiosity threaded throughout a work- revealing those feelings and exploring those spaces.  A gap is introduced and a possibility for intimacy is created.