For the second time in as many years, a Toronto artist's artwork will be displayed in conjunction with the international archeological exhibit The Mysterious Bog People. Kathleen Vaughan's The Bog Series, a collection of works on canvas and linen developed before and independently of the now famous show, will be showing 10 November through 10 December 2004 at the Municipal Hall and the ICO (Centre for Arts and Culture) in Assen, Netherlands. Simultaneously, The Mysterious Bog People will be on display until January 9, 2005 at the nearby Drents Museum.
Last year, when the international exhibition broke records at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Ms. Vaughan's work was on show at the nearby Galerie Montcalm. This year, the Galerie Montcalm, through the Ville de Gatineau, partners in the presentation of Ms. Vaughan's The Bog Series in the Netherlands.
A cycle of mixed media works on canvas and linen, The Bog Series incorporates life-sized photographic images of Iron Age figures, full-scale drawings from models, textile elements and highly textural paint and wax. This series is a visual and visceral celebration of the life-death continuum and an exploration of the connections that our shared human corporeality allows us to build between one another.
"The more I researched the bog people's late Iron Age cultures, the more their world-view seemed a much-needed complement to our post-industrial ethos," comments Ms. Vaughan on The Bog Series. "They were community-oriented. Their knowledge of the world was based in their senses and intuition. Iron Age culture was oral and embedded in ritual. To them, life and death were part of a continuum, and being selected as the bog’s sacrifice a high honour. We tend to segregate death as a feared and unknowable 'Other.' Indeed, this is perhaps also the way we view the bog person, whose worldview is so foreign to our own."
Ms. Vaughan will be involved in a joint tour with the Drents Museum (12 November), give a lecture about her work and offer a hands-on workshop for local artists (13 November).
"It's a homecoming to have my work shown in the terrain that inspired it: bog country," concludes Ms. Vaughan.
About the artist
Kathleen Vaughan is an artist, writer, teacher and PhD candidate at York University, where she is the Faculty of Education’s Artist-in-Residence. Her work explores memory, sensation, imagination, family history and the experience of place, and can be seen on her Web site at www.akaredhanded.com.
IMAGE
Kathleen Vaughan
1996
Oil, acrylic, and encaustic paint;
photographic emulsion;
textile appliqué;
charcoal pencil on layers of cheesecloth and cotton.
72 x 108 inches wide in three panels
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