Kathryn Mckelvey
Visual Artist - BFA, MFA
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New paintings on display at MAWA in the Winter Mothering exhibition on until May 24 2014.
KATHRYN MCKELVEY’S recent paintings, Constellations of Understanding, explore the social, aesthetic and psychological aspects of personal experiences with domestic routines and family relations, home and travel. These paintings are combinations of patterns and diagrams such as family trees, or hand-drawn maps that are layered with images of cars, dogs, houses and landmarks. By locating the familiar within the ambiguous space of abstract design, she creates narratives that meander through time and space, imbued with memory and mystery.
McKelvey’s Recartography series involves the de-inscription of published road maps in which she meticulously replaces all traces of language with tiny fields of colour derived from the map- maker’s own choices. These terrains, devoid of direction, names and, to a large extent, history and politics, become navigable as aesthetic experiences, or as reconstructions in the memories of viewers familiar with the places depicted.
