Reception: Thursday Nov 27th, 6:30 pm.
Artist Statement: Boats are meant to be steady, graceful things. In Ship Happens!, sails warp, hulls bend, and vessels dissolve into abstraction, turning harbours into places of chaos. These sailboats are photographs printed onto birch plywood and painted in moody brown ochres. They borrow the drama of the Old Masters, lending weight and solemnity to images that are, at heart, unruly. They are boats remembered through a haze: familiar yet disobedient, dignified yet faintly absurd.
Alongside these painted distortions rests another fleet: vintage irons dismantled and reassembled into miniature leisure craft. Balanced on a wooden ironing board, these uncanny vessels reframe tools of domestic labour as objects of pleasure. The faint hiss of an iron across cloth evokes both the repetitive strain of work and the gentle rhythm of water lapping at a dock.
Together, the works chart shifting meanings of labour and leisure. Ironing, once a weekly ritual demanding strength, patience, and skill, now lingers mostly for special occasions. Boating, once tied to fishing and transport, has drifted into the realm of escape and play. Both practices have been reshaped and replaced by technologies promising ease.
In these works, the boundaries between work and play begin to blur. These irons and boats carry traces of skill, care, and memory, but also a wink. They refuse to behave as intended and sometimes drift off course. Sometimes, ship just happens.
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