For the month of October, 2002, Sackville, NB welcomes Shary Boyle as Struts Gallery’s Open Studio Artist-in-Residence.

Toronto-artist Shary Boyle’s studio practice is based in drawing, however, through the incorporation of painting, performance, sculpture, Super-8 filmmaking, and bookworks, she pushes drawing beyond its traditional category. Recently, Boyle has collaborated with musicians to further extend this boundary, creating live drawings during audio performances. During her residency, Struts will become the site of a month-long performance, resulting in an installation created using live drawings from an overhead projector.

Since her graduation from the Ontario College of Art & Design in 1994, Boyle has been setting up temporary studios throughout Canada and Europe, alternating between the activity of urban centres and the contemplation brought on by isolated rural communities. Boyle sees these intervals as opportunities to “gather stories and experience through interaction with the people, history and places I engage with”. Her works have a narrative quality comparable to fairy tales, but she is interested in creating a new language that isn’t “concerned with happy endings, nor claim endings of any kind”. Boyle’s drawings are stories frozen in time, blurring the line between fantasy and reality that exists in our own relationships and experiences with our bodies, families and lovers.

As part of her residency, Boyle will be bringing one of her “performative drawings” to Sackville. First performed in Berlin, Germany, Honkitonkioke is a drawing/Country & Western karaoke act that incoporates live singing, dancing and the manipulation of projected drawings that correspond to the music lyrics. Honkitonkioke will be performed on Saturday, October 26 at 8pm at the Feverish Cabaret, part of the 7th Annual Symposium of Art, I’d be a Fool, presented by Struts Artist-Run Centre and the Owen’s Art Gallery.

sharyboyle@hotmail.com

BACK TO RESIDENCIES 2002