MACKENZIE KELLY-FRÈRE

INTERVAL/DURATION

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APRIL 8 - MAY 14, 2016

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, APRIL 8,  6 - 10:30PM

 

Evans Contemporary is pleased to present Interval/Duration, an exhibition of contemporary textiles by Calgary artist, Mackenzie Kelly-Frère.

 

Using natural materials and plant-sourced colour, Kelly-Frère's practice is rooted in a contemplative approach to cloth construction.

 

"I favour compositional strategies where both the duration of and intervals between pattern elements are based on random numerical sequences, measurements taken from my body, and antique winding tools made irregular with time and wear. As I engage with layers of complexity driven by factors over which I have little control, intervals emerge in which apparently random sequences coalesce into visible repetitions or patterns."

 

In combination, Kelly-Frère's methods produce complexity and variations that echo patterns found in nature and the irregular symmetries of the body.

 

"There is a gestural logic to the rhythmic and cumulative processes of textile construction in which the ancient human impulse for pattern, order and cohesion is embedded as much into our idea of cloth, as it may be in the cloth itself. The intimacy of cloth made by hand, and our centuries-old familiarity with it make cloth not only related to the body, but itself (an)other body. In my recent work I am compelled by the way in which cloth may intimate both human presence and absence (often simultaneously) and have begun to explore the notion of embodiment as it relates to the praxis of making cloth by hand. As a material aggregation of dedicated gestures, breath and thought enacted through an interval of time – cloth tacitly communicates the immaterial and enmeshes the intangible."

 

Owing to these laboriously detailed production methods, and his considered approach, the artists produces textiles that are delicate, ethereal, and hauntingly beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Mackenzie Kelly-Frère is a textile artist and educator whose work has been exhibited across Canada, including the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2013, and the International Biennale du lin du Portneuf in Deschambault-Grondines, Quebec in 2009. His international exhibitions have included shows in China, Japan, Korea and the United States where he also participated in a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon. In 2014 Mackenzie mounted his first solo international exhibition at GalleryGallery in Kyoto, Japan, and has recently launched an exhibition at Trames Gallery at the Monteral Centre for Contemporary Textiles. He has also contributed texts to various Canadian and international publications including Craft Perception & Practice Vol III and recently to Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. Mackenzie teaches in the School of Craft + Emerging Media at the Alberta College of Art + Design in Calgary, where he lives with his husband Kristofer Kelly-Frère and daughter Elizabeth.

 

 

 

 

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Evans Contemporary would like to thank Anne Jaeger, Laurie Westaway, Mackenzie Kelly-Frère and Trames Gallery at the Monteral Centre for Contemporary Textiles.

 

 

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Evans Contemporary gratefully acknowledges the support of Peterborough/Barcelona based CM Consulting