Window Box Gallery – Gallery 1313
title LOCATION , LOCATION , LOCATION by Mary Kainer
Sept. 26-October 23
Window Box Gallery :Location, location, location , an urban landscape an installation by Mary Kainer Sighting a ghost bike I pause, take a moment to locate myself and observe my urban landscape.
Reminded of my vulnerability, I pedal off and continue on my way.
Visions of my surroundings once again narrowed and foreshortened to concentrate on potholes, streetcar tracks, passing cars, ambulance sirens, traffic signals.
The unseen presence of blood, death and injury seeps into the grey concrete and I seek the lines of white on pavement as shelter. Only the wind on my face reminds me there is a natural world beyond the danger.
The misfortune of location is the subject of Mary Kainer’s installation in the Window Box Gallery. The two collaged side panels illustrate the location of the death of cyclists in the neighbourhood. Lying behind a ghost bicycle, car and bicycle tire treads collide in the central panel.
Born in Saskatchewan, Mary Kainer has lived, worked, volunteered and raised three children in Toronto, working as an administrator and community activist. She pursued art studies at the Toronto School of Art. In 2017 Kainer was awarded Ontario Arts Council’s mid-career artist grant. In 2015, her Fracking series earned a first prize in the John B. Aird’s Contemporary Drawing Exhibition. Her works have been shown in the Dunlop and Art Gallery of Peterborough, artist-run centres, commercial galleries and in juried exhibitions. Her artistic practice addresses the political, personal and purely visual through drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, obsessive construction, and installation.
The artist thanks WIA projects’ curators, Pam Patterson and Leena Raudvee, and gallery director, Phil Anderson for the opportunity to exhibit in the Window Box Gallery, Gallery 1313.