Georgia Dickie reviewed in Peripheral Review

April 14, 2020

Georgia Dickie reviewed in Peripheral Review for her solo show at Oakville Galleries.

As I walked through Agouti Sky, Georgia Dickie’s solo exhibition at Oakville Galleries, I kept hearing my dad’s voice in my head. “Let’s see what’s in inventory,” the phrase he habitually announces before hastening off to his basement workshop to find something. Though my father would argue otherwise, the room is shambolic, muddled with tools, his exercise bike and innumerable things. These things are of some mysterious origin, known only to him, and they’ve been saved as “inventory” for moments just like this—the moment when “this might come in handy” is realized. So, as I came face-to-face with Dickie’s most conspicuous, centrally-placed piece, Reef (2019), a multi-part installation of found objects, my mind began swanning through the familiarity of it all: this was an inventory. Reef, in sum with the eleven other sculptural works in the show, is an assemblage of items: wooden boxes, satellite dishes, a leather belt, metal frames, cash registers, metal wiring, a tensor bandage, tubing, ropes, cut paper, candles and a baby seat. A jumbled group of things, with some mysterious origin, known only to her.

In the years I’ve observed Dickie’s practice, I’ve come to think that she must share the same methodology as my favourite sea creature: the xenophoridae, or, as it’s more commonly known, the carrier shell. The xenophoridae, a type of sea snail, collects small stones and shells as it travels along the ocean floor, periodically cementing them to its own shell as it grows. Similar to the personalities and styles of people, their appearances range from tame to eccentric; some xenophoridae choose to affix small, unremarkable stones to their back, while others place outlandishly large pieces of coral that stand six inches tall. In kind, Dickie balances, props or fettles objects together in such a fashion that, in touching one another, form contingent synecdochal relationships—the small pieces each act alone to collectively make a whole. Within the spectrum of tame to eccentric, Dickie plainly and playfully careens towards the latter. In the creation of her sculptures, the gizmos, whatsits and doodads that Dickie collects during neighbourhood travels become her shell—neatly articulated formations, wherein, at her appeal, the objects must reckon with their differences in order to create a cohesive singular identity. This negotiation is neatly articulated by the wall-mounted sculpture Myrtleherb (2019), which balanced a wishbone-shaped twig bedecked with rocks, a single red bead, an earring and a fish hook over the arm of a rusted gas meter.

I found it apposite to see that Frances Loeffler’s accompanying exhibition text, “Regarding Objects” similarly drew a comparison between Dickie’s practice and the animalistic. For Loeffler, Dickie works in the method of a bowerbird in how they both select, arrange and balance objects by shape or colour. Loeffler weighs the possible corollaries of this assimilation—is it an exercise in control? An attempt to “bring some rationality to the madness of our current reality?” but it was her concluding hypothesis which, to me, was the most resounding. She proposes that perhaps this is Dickie’s method of regarding, of “seeing and valuing” the objects accruing around us, rather than simply “consuming and discarding them.” (1) To me, the productivity of this idea extends beyond determining Dickie’s artistic motivations, and helps to unravel why I enjoy this work. It is not a revelation, but rather a reminder, of how objects function for people as a method of assimilation. Similar to the xenophoridae, we bear objects, and the things we encounter, as a means to understanding our surroundings as our own. Consistently, we place and replace them, in personal configurations in the hopes that our external world will appear ever-so-slightly more like that of our internal one. Whether we are collecting or discarding things, we still evaluate them; we must subjectively consider how they fit into our understanding of ourselves and our needs of the past, present and future. This process is idiosyncratic and personal (even if I feel a certain kinship with Dickie’s decision to hand-stitch a scrap paper with the word “POUTINE” on it to a large satellite dish for Wendell Spinney (rainmaker) (2019)).

There is something about the quote, un-quote object that keeps us entangled. The idea that reconfiguring “garbage” might allow it to become art has surely been made the point of satire in regards to the contemporary art world. And yet, it continues to provoke. An answer may rest in the latent artfulness of collections like my father’s: the particular, eminently personal, rhymes and reasons that go into their formation, making their resonance sublimely human—or, as the xenophoridae and bowerbird reveal, animalistic. This sentience and moxie is what I find calls loudest amongst Georgia Dickie’s assembly of objects, and, for me, it translates into comfort. This might be because of the dust: the thick layer of dirt settled onto and nestled into these objects in a manner that only time and neglect can incite. You can smell it, taste it and recoil in the reminder of how it feels to coat your fingers in that type of aged soot. These objects are familiar—an inventory, a shell—an organization of things that signal a person’s self-reflexive moments of regarding and valuation. Dickie’s methods of seeing the value in her inventory is a manner of looking into and appreciating the self; it is to lie in wait for that moment in time when a thing is just right.

Frances Loeffler, Regarding Objects, exhibition text to accompany Georgia Dickie’s Agouti Sky at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square from 6 October 2019 to 5 January 2020.

-Kate Kolberg

To view the full article please visit Peripheral Review.

For more information about Georgia Dickie please contact the gallery:

info@coopercolegallery.com
+1.416.531.8000

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	1 year	This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.

Cookie	Duration	Description
IDE	1 year 24 days	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
test_cookie	15 minutes	This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Duration	Description
CONSENT	16 years 9 months 23 days 2 hours	No description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	1 year	No description
_gat_gtag_UA_135534658_1	1 minute	No description