In Meigs’ new, prolific body of work everything is round, everything goes around: all life, all beings, all energy, all effort, all virtue, all extremes, all circumstances, all creations, all competition, all plans, all else. The individual is everything that is possible in the Universe. Space is infinitely immense. Time exceeds all.
Each distinct form in All to All performs a function. In unison, they work together to raise amplitude. Elevators, a project that encompasses one hundred and fifty small paintings, envelops the space. They give us a lift up. They remind us that we work too hard. Take it easy: EZ. Like blue pouring from yellow, the ten large Mysticpaintings each convey an ecstatic state, or possible condition, frozen as image. Announcing time’s tik-tok presence, six blank and handless ‘unclocks’ demonstrate its relative existence. Six rotating cookie containers make a racket of noise: crash, jingle, clatter. Literally tin, they initiate resonance on the cheap. Fifteen black EGOdisks spread across the gallery floor. They provide a link to the ho-hum changeless sameness of the day-to-day structure of our lives. Upstairs, The Bones in Golden Robes —self-activating robotic spectres—spin golden circles. Even while shrouded in anonymity, their revolving presence bears witness.
Every day the artist will activate the artwork, the building, and the people within it by providing a fifteen-minute Chau gong performance. The reverberations generated resemble NASA’s recordings of sound waves that wash over us from deep space.
Sandra Meigs was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1953. She holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1975) and an MA in Philosophy from Dalhousie University (1980). Her work has been exhibited at the Ydessa Hendeles Foundation, Toronto; the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; The Power Plant, Toronto; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montréal; the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Montréal; Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; and Open Space, Victoria. She has recently participated in group exhibitions at Museum London, London, Ontario; West Vancouver Museum, Vancouver; The Power Plant, Toronto; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto. She currently lives in Victoria, BC, where she is a professor in the Visual Arts department at the University of Victoria. Last spring Meigs received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art.
Susan Hobbs Gallery is open to the public Wednesday to Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and by appointment. The gallery is located at 137 Tecumseth Street, Toronto.
