Ode to Paper Trails, solo exhibition, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia

(Photography by Seamus Gallagher, images appear courtesy of the Anna Leonowens Gallery)

I made this exhibition with the idea that the devices of the mass media industry could be repurposed or appropriated to service more humane needs and expressions. My exploration of print mediums such as etching, relief and silkscreen are rooted in their relation to mass media and their ability to subvert the status quo, through the process of permeation.

This project began with over four months of continuous writing, note-taking and collecting. Whether through my receipt-paper journal, audio recording, or print-making, Paper Trails was the outcome of many modes of recording and gathering. The suite of prints surrounding the walls of the gallery, a fifteen minute recording compiling field recordings, songs and sounds, and two receipt printers. Each printer is loaded with screen-printed copies of my receipt-paper journal, dispensing the contents of my thoughts and experiences of the last four months. The text scrawled throughout the receipts permeate through all of the work in the show, appearing in the etchings, and the carved blocks. Even the receipt machines can be heard printing, while certain excerpts are recited in the audio recordings.

The paper trails, both my own and found, convey the sense of capturing a moment in time. They are cues left behind, picked up, and placed somewhere new, like receipts, hand written notes, and other notations of our lives. I am interested in excavating the personal from the excrement of the everyday. The ephemera that is usually described as waste or unimportant.  

This debris creates an instance where capitalism or industry can be circumvented. Small gestures where the personal can object the rule of a monetary value system. Where a receipt might only describe a transaction, in this space, it has the permission to describe feeling and experience, something felt at a particular time. Instead of a system that is not capable of finding value in the mundane or the personal, Ode to Paper Trails erupts with the gestures of our living.