Allison Hrabluik, The Splits. Installation view, SFU Gallery, 2016. Photo: Blaine Campbell.
Allison Hrabluik: The Splits
January 30 - April 22, 2016
SFU Gallery
In her exploration of narrative construction, Allison Hrabluik's visual practice finds its focus in the voices, rhythms and methodologies of storytelling. Her work includes video, sculpture, animation, drawing, performance and text, often to humorous or absurdist ends. With a recent focus on choreography, and collaboration with both dancers and musicians, Hrabluik's works reveal characters through various narrative processes: so-called documentary objectivity, the messy subjectivity of first-person narration, allegorical third-person perspective, and the generative ambiguity of abstraction.
The Splits, Hrabluik's most recent video work, combines documentary and narrative in a montage of motion and sound. The camera documents a group of twenty people gathered in a hall to perform. Scissors clip, a rope whirs, the sound of a mouth harp interrupts an operatic scream. The cast includes real-life performers whose skills range from the mundane to the extraordinary: a hula hooper, a singer, a pizza dough thrower, speed skippers, tap dancers, gymnasts and dog trainers. Two men make salami, a woman gets a haircut and someone eats too many hotdogs. Hrabluikâs editing creates an exquisite corpse, connecting the performers as their bodies tap out a spellbinding rhythm.
Hrabluik lives and works in Vancouver. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Gent; Western Bridge, Seattle; Vancouver Art Gallery; Mercer Union, Toronto; Video Pool, Winnipeg; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Market Gallery, Glasgow; The Western Front, Vancouver; and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver.
Curated by Melanie O'Brian.
Events
Opening Reception and Artist Talk
Saturday, January 30, 1pm (SFU Gallery opens at noon)
