NICOLE ONDRE
Blood Knot
8 December - 20 January 2019
Unit 17 is pleased to announce Blood Knot, a solo exhibition of new painting and sculpture by Vancouver artist Nicole Ondre.
This body of work explores the ways that surfaces encapsulate space and how forms are themselves encapsulated through specific materiality or processes. For this exhibition, Ondre has used clay as a central material, working with glazed and bisque-fired stoneware, along with painting in lipstick, oil, glue and ink.
Ondre treats the space of the gallery as a vessel or body, introducing binding yet versatile structural forms, including handles, knots and webs. These forms, functional and aesthetic in their usual manifestations, are constructed in ceramic, a material that is brittle yet enduring. The work emphasizes cuts and breaks which reveal gaps and undersides. These are in play with the processes - material, biological, and psychic - of fixing through attachments, sutures and adhesions.
Nicole Ondre (b. 1986) holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg. Her work has been included in solo, two person and group exhibitions at Diaz Contemporary, Toronto (2014); Or Gallery, Vancouver (2013); Benzulli zeigt, Düsseldorf (2012) and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2011). Since 2010, she has collaborated with Vanessa Disler under the alias Feminist Land Art Retreat (FLAR). Most recently, FLAR's work has been exhibited at Nottingham Contemporary; 500 Capp Street Foundation / David Ireland House, San Francisco; SFU Audain Gallery, Vancouver (all 2018); Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover; Ginerva Gambino, Cologne (both 2017); Kunsthaus Bregenz and JTT, New York (both 2016). From 2011-2013 Ondre co-operated the project space Exercise in Vancouver.