Dinner in The Kiln
May 5, 2023
Park Ja-Il
May 9, 2023
Exhibition runs May 27th – July 9th, 2023
Opening Reception + Artists Panel Discussion May 26th 6-9pm @Yuill Family Gallery
This exhibition is part of the 2023 Medalta International Artists in Residence program.
Artist Statement
I use my body as a topic of study, and as a material to search for an identity. I dissect and analyze my sense of self by making plaster press molds with my body. In this process, my physical parts are multiplied and become a dramatized, emotional repetition of forms, proposing essential questions about the human experience. My use of form provokes and relates with a viewer’s body and embodied experiences. These techniques are a method for understanding and conveying how every experience in ordinary life makes marks on my body, continually transforming it.
In this exhibition, Hanging In, I use the form of the box to ask questions about the transition. Things in boxes have transformed when we unpack them, regardless of how long they were in there. This transformation is because of changes in our perception over time, and the shifting influences of culture and history. This instability makes me think about my body’s physical location, my mental state, a feeling of being in-between, and not knowing where I belong. The objects in this exhibition are explorations of my thinking about location and how one is continuously asked to categorize one’s material and immaterial belongings, discarding or packing them away. During the performance, InTransition, I materialize transition with my body and form an identity, witnessed by the audience.
Artist Biography
Tomo Ingalls is currently a long-term artist in residence at Medalta. Her intensive clay study started in 2014 at Gloucester Pottery School. She trained as a potter at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and sells her work through galleries in the maritime provinces. Her curiosity took her from New Brunswick to Calgary to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in Craft Media from Alberta University of the Arts. Her practice connects daily activity, the body, and performance, proposing new ways to express intangible emotions.
