Circuitous Routs: Excess/ Abundance

Dates: November 6 to December 12, 2009

Artist: Wendy Welch (Victoria)

Artist's Talk and Opening: November 6, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.

Circuitous Routes: Excess/Abundance catalogue with essay by John Luna is available for purchase at Open Space

Victoria artist Wendy Welch is fascinated by contemporary desire, and the tangible evidence left in its wake. Circuitous Routes: Excess/Abundance featured six new works that originated in Welch’s commitment to drawing and installation. She honours the everyday materials that come into her life—whether the gifts of materials from her students, or found objects or the various envelopes and print materials that cross her desk.

An inveterate collector and recycler of objects, Welch examines the impulse to collect, to store and to amass material goods, both as an individual and as a contributor to a wider consumer culture. Welch gives unexpected form to the accumulated residue of consumerism by transforming ephemera into a monumental study of abundance and identified exactly where abundance tips into excess. Welch described the installation as a “three-dimensional scribble,” a deliberately non-functional, provisional, structured and chaotic milieu, in which visitors considered materiality, process, accumulation and, indirectly, landscape.

Wendy Welch studied visual art at the University of Victoria (MFA), California State University in Los Angeles and Concordia University, Montreal (BFA). Her work has been presented at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Richmond Art Gallery among other galleries and artist-run centres. In addition to her visual art practice, Welch is an art writer, curator and educator. She is the Founder and Director of the Vancouver Island School of Art.

www.wendywelch.com