May 10 – 28, 2023
Gallery Opening: Saturday, May 13, 2 – 5 pm
Hybrid Artist Talks, in Gallery and on Zoom: Sunday, May 21, 2 pm (EDT)
Zoom registration via Eventbrite
Bugs in my Head is an ode to the thoughts that roam through my mind, crawling about most incessantly in the dark hours of the night. The thoughts are mostly the same; they are recycled versions of themselves. And so I have embodied them in my signature way—by recycling my old art, giving new life to the frames, wires, screws and nails which make up my work.
When I began working on this exhibition, I burned matches. The matches lifted the night and kept my bugs at bay. I kept the extinguished match sticks because in them I saw antennae, the primary sensory system for a majority of insects. Antennae are a super-sense of sorts: a combination of smell, sight, sound, taste and touch that tell insects about their world. We, humans, are often trying to figure out our lives by putting our own “feelers” out there. During the day, but often most intensely in the solitude of the night.
The timeline of matches reflects the inspiration for these carbon antennae.
Doris Purchase is a Toronto-based mixed media artist with degrees from the Ontario College of Art & Design and the University of Guelph. Doris’s work is predominantly conceptual and draws on the materiality behind a painting. Through her practice, she focuses on artists’ materials to invoke conversations about Western ideals and question our value system. Part sculpture, part painting, these pieces are inversions. They are about unearthing what’s obscured to bring the raw materials of a painting to the fore.
