September 12, 2013

Ambient Plagues Unleashed

Ambient Plagues have been unleashed upon my fair city of Toronto by Elaine Whittaker at the Redhead Gallery. The show opened September 4th, with the reception tomorrow, Friday the 13th if you’re inclined to mix superstitious luck with scientific microbial nightmares.

By Glendon Mellow

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Ambient Plagues have been unleashed upon my fair city of Toronto by Elaine Whittaker at the Redhead Gallery.

The show opened September 4th, with the reception tomorrow, Friday the 13th if you're inclined to mix superstitious luck with scientific microbial nightmares.

Whittaker is a sculptor, encaustic painter and mixed media installation artist here in Toronto, and one of the preeminent sciartists in the fine art scene.

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About the show, from the Redhead Gallery exhibition listing:

Have you walked out of a pandemic movie lately with the hair raised on the back of your neck? Not because of the throes of flesh eating zombies but because the guy who sat beside you was coughing the whole time? We are surrounded by microbes, are composed of microbes, and we are terrified of them. We live in a porous world, in porous bodies.
Through sculpture, photography, microscopy, and live bacteria, the artworks blur the boundaries between what is real and what is manufactured, what is animate and what is inanimate. Ultimately, they challenge viewers’ perceptions about their bodies, a site that has become trespassed, tainted, and contaminated by a popular culture that escalates social anxiety and terror of microbes, by artificially creating a sense of bioparanoia.

"Bioparanoia". I like that.

Bioart is the future, people! Go see this show and witness a fine art movement at its roots.

The reception is tomorrow, Friday the 13th, 6:30-9pm at the Redhead Gallery in the 401 Richmond St. W building.

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More places to find Elaine Whittaker:

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Hope you're enjoying September's SciArt Blitz so far here on Symbiartic! On this day last year, Kalliopi featured the surreal bone sculpture artwork of James Prosek in her post, Forget Jackalopes, I Want That. Check it out!

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