Opening Reception:
Saturday Sept 6th 2014 from 3-8pm
Narwhal / 2104 Dundas St West
Hyacinths & Thistles is Lauchie Reid’s third solo exhibition at Narwhal and features fourteen works of oil on birch panel that invite viewers into a well-developed world of the unknown and underrepresented. The works function as captured moments in the lives of an extensive cast of odd and compelling characters, many of whom have roots in the collaborative fine art entity Team Macho, of which Reid is a founding member. Often using found historical photographs as a point of departure, Reid blends his narrative with imagined and real truths, recreating images with committed exactitude, while taking liberties to add, eliminate or conceal certain details. The resulting works are powerful and perplexing, ripe with both historical authority and contemporary ambiguity. Reid’s seamless merging of fact with fiction serves to couple tradition with an interwoven web of well-kept secrets and asks his viewers to question notions of historicity, representation, truth claims and presentism.
As authentic but unlikely heroes, the subjects of this series stand as a warning against both nostalgia and hierarchy. Whether through the haunting face of a medical patient peering out from behind the dress of a much more fortunate girl, the obscured identities and silent stares of generals and commanders, or in the shining medal of honour that hangs from the neck of an aging drummer boy, these characters demand to be taken seriously and never pitied.
Often using found historical photographs as a point of departure, Reid blends his narrative with imagined and real truths, recreating images with committed exactitude, while taking liberties to add, eliminate or conceal certain details. The resulting paintings are powerful and perplexing, ripe with both historical authority and contemporary ambiguity. Although the work can be directly and immediately appreciated for its skillful execution, its true strength rests in the seamless merging of fact with fiction. By coupling tradition with an interwoven web of well-kept secrets, Reid asks his viewers to question notions of historicity, representation, truth claims and presentism.
The exhibition’s title work, Hyacinths & Thistles, presents the powerfully haunting scene of a Victorian portrait of five sisters, each wearing different models of 16th and 17th century scold’s bridals. Through the careful rendering of this brutal practice of imposed marginality, Reid has transformed the sisters into symbolic archetypes of both victimhood and strength. Despite their humiliation, these women hold their dignity in tact, endowed with graceful details and numerous tiny features that offer clues to a narrative extending well beyond the limits of the picture frame.
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