Courtney Faulkner
May 3, 2021
Handle with care (a practice in losing control)
May 7, 2021
Exhibition runs until July 3, 2021
This exhibition is part of the 2021 Medalta International Artists in Residence program.
Amy Duval’s work is an attempt at creating metaphors for the simultaneously beautiful and messy nature of the human experience, while instilling a sense of hope that bursts forth from the chaos of destruction. Her wall mounted ceramic sculptures are made using a variety of building techniques, and are created through the consideration of an imagined marriage between two seemingly oppositional ideas: the mechanic and organic. What kind of new forms and structures would emerge from the combination of these differing concepts? Despite the perceived futility and trauma of destruction, the work is meant to contain energy and hope for new forms/systems/structures and ideas that can come into bloom in the aftermath. Working with the idea of the diagram as a mode for understanding the world, objects are placed in specific proximity to one another to create new relationships. These diagrams are a collection of paradoxes, chaotic and organized, systematic and organic. They are filled with references to the history of these objects and the vulnerability involved in allowing ourselves to imagine a future where they have the potential to to grow and expand into new territory and meanings.
Artist Biography
Born and raised in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Amy Duval received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2017 where she focused on ceramic sculpture and installation based work. Merging slip casted, hand built, and wheel thrown forms, Amy creates site specific installations that explore her interests in the mechanic, organic, internal and external, as well as drawing and painting. These installations are simultaneously perverse and familiar, futile and strange, and explore ideas of growth and transformation in relation to machinery and the human body. She sees working directly on the wall as a method of bridging the gap and exploring the tension between sculpture and painting, and hopes that through creating site specific works she will deepen her understanding of how she interacts with the world, and the role she plays in contemporary society as a maker. In April 2017, she was accepted as a ceramic artist in residence at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, and in August 2019 she started as the full time Ceramic Studio Technician at the Shaw Centre at Medalta, Medicine Hat.
