ARTIST STATEMENT

Architecture, urban landscape and personal history intersect in my art practice. I explore theidea of home in my paintings and the built environment in the sculptures that I construct. Ineach series, I endeavor to consider the spaces we inhabit and how we move through themphysically and emotionally.In my paintings, wooden supports in the shape of a house are beguilingly simple but the subjectof home is complex. What does it mean to have a home? A prison or a refuge? A place ofbelonging or no more than a suitcase; it is a physical space but also an emotional landscapeinextricably bound with memory. Domestic objects – a chair, a lamp, a coffee cup, stand in ascharacters in these abstracted interiors that combine color and fragments of text to create openended narratives.My sculptural work then expands from personal spaces into the urban/industrial landscape.Using found/salvaged materials like wood, cardboard and plastic I respond to their materiality tobuild structures and installations that reflect the rapid expansion of cities and their resultingcast-offs. Left in piles by the roadside or in dumpsters they call out to be turned into somethingmore. Reimagined, they retain their history while becoming something entirely different.

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Cul de Sac Acrylic on Cardboard Installation shot, size variable – 16 pieces 2019 $800

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BIOGRAPHY

Fern Long is a contemporary artist living and working in Victoria, BC. She is a member of BOXCARSIX artist collective and a Diploma of Fine Art graduate from Vancouver Island School of Art (June 2018).  Architecture, urban landscape and personal history intersect in Fern’s art practice. Moving between painting, drawing and sculpture she builds structures that explore the spaces we inhabit and how we move thru them both physically and emotionally.

Follow Fern on Instagram and her Website

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Thank you for viewing this digital exhibition by Fern Long. We hope  you enjoyed it as much as we did. Please stay tuned for new exhibitions coming soon.

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©Fern Long. Courtesy of the artist.

The Slide Room Gallery is very excited to start our season of virtual exhibitions with Mary Babineau, a very talented local artist who is also a graduate of the Diploma of Fine Arts of Vancouver Island School of Art.

Thank you Mary for opening this new chapter in our gallery.

For more information on Mary visit her website https://marytbabineau.com/

 

My work is about where I go and what I’m going through. Paintings express my experience of urban environment, physical state and response to situation.
Process directs how I think through a painting. Some are drawn from my vacation photos, taken when I get a break from responsibility. I use sense memory and gesture to share the pleasure but am unable to deny what is seen, such as the contrasts of lives and fortune on the Las Vegas Strip, or the lot of work over leisure for servers in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Other paintings incorporate photos of spaces and objects in museums: using these I construct inviting sanctuaries which offer me comfort. I also work from imagination, exploring personal motifs and an abstract language of mark-making. There is a release of energy in the immediacy of what I am dealing with and by trusting to intuition and practice an image is created.
I’m currently working on a series about making it through the final year of my father’s life. He passed away recently at the fine age of ninety-seven years and seven months. I was his live-in caregiver for over eight years and suffered from sleep deprivation and financial challenges in this time. The solace I have found in beauty with the tandem flux of change, vulnerability and disintegration manifest in my work.
I’ve learned to accept tedious stress, share some sense of security tempered with dulling fatigue, and observe the falling apart along with the elation of making art from life.