The Illuminations Project' is a decade-long collaboration between two artists, feminists and friends. Shary Boyle and Emily Vey Duke's visionary call-and-response artwork forges connections between drawing and writing to create an exquisitely rendered road map through the chaos of growing up female, fearless and hungry for meaning. Looking for an alternative to the convention in which images illustrate texts and texts explicate images, the artists developed a more associative method of combining words and pictures based upon a long-distance correspondence between 2003 and 2010. Half of Boyle?s drawings were developed in response to Duke?s poems, and vice versa. In both cases, the responding artist used the other?s work as a point of departure rather than a directive. Printed in its entirety, 'The Illuminations Project' assumes an epic structure, embracing free-form ideas as readily as the drive for narrative momentum. The project loosely charts the journey of a character named Bloodie, a young girl who travels across fantastical lands populated by all manner of creature - human, animal and otherwise. Drawing on philosophy, religion and myths alike, the tale that unfolds speaks potently to the freedoms and dangers of the wild, the nature of power and desire, and the brutalities of contemporary life. Shary Boyle works across diverse media, including ceramics, sculpture, painting, installation and drawing. Her work has been widely exhibited at, most notably, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, University of California San Diego, ICA Boston and the National Gallery of Canada. 0Exhibition: Oakville Galleries, Canada (14.09.2014-04.01.2016).
Alternative Title
Illuminations project : Shary Boyle and Emily Vey Duke