Ozone Gleaners

Artists: Tiziana La Melia (Vancouver) + geetha thurairajah (Brooklyn and Toronto)
Opening: Thursday January 9, 5:30 - 8:30pm
Exhibition: January 9 to February 15, 2020

Articles :
http://the-editorialmagazine.com/tiziana-la-melia-geetha-thurairajah-ozone-gleaners/
https://artviewer.org/tiziana-la-melia-and-geetha-thurairajah-at-projet-pangee/

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Tiziana La Melia, Visitors (2020), dye silk, ceramic beads

Tiziana La Melia, Visitors (detail)

geetha thurairajah, Onement (2019), acrylic on canvas

Tiziana La Melia, Country Mouse, City Mouse – No Point de Capiton (2020), oil and flashe on wood panel

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geetha thurairajah, Subtle Exchanges (2019), acrylic on canvas and pine frame

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geetha thurairajah, We Work to Pay Bills (2019), acrylic on canvas

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Tiziana La Melia, Country Mouse, City Mouse – The Simple Life (2020), oil on panel

geetha thurairajah & Tiziana La Melia, The Stoner’s Dilemma (2020), local clay, chia seeds

geetha thurairajah & Tiziana La Melia, Lovers (I & II) (2020), leather, buttons

geetha thurairajah, Neophyte (2019), acrylic on canvas

geetha thurairajah, Convergence (2019), acrylic on canvas

Tiziana La Melia, Country Mouse, City Mouse – Love Wisteria (2020), oil and pastel on wood panel, stained glass

Tiziana La Melia, Emo Cloud Tracking Stress (2020), nightlight, steel wool, calendula, wire

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Tiziana La Melia, Hubcap with Profiterol Poem (2016-2020), steel, lipstick, phototransfer, ribbon, apples, sealed with two kisses

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Tiziana La Melia, Wand (2020), nightlight, ribbon, found object

Kneading water, seeds + soil represented as marzipan fictions

That night, from the ankles down
there are two memorable situations

recalled from a night walk to the M.U.O.S, yet
looking pictures on my phone the situations look like nothing

There is a need to hum that one situation is a small troop of mushrooms bathing
under moonlight reveal attention against the effect of

gamma rays on everyone’s marigolds
Pressing the caps, the gates still closed

Step over & click, tread through the tall lit grass
dedicated to the sheepiest time of day

Decoration is both prayer and the drive towards bourgeois opulent promises
swallow steady

The second situation
below ankle height

Square pores Negative
Intersect with Space
Moralizing architecture For bunnies

The horizontality Hugh Hefner insisted on in his surveillance mansion continues
to lure thee, Tell me the abstraction of home on hot soil

I noticed the skin of the oracle - a hard stone fruit
Temporary ovens for hillsides teething

(excerpt from OAKWALKDRONE poem by Tiziana La Melia)

Projet Pangée is proud to present Ozone Gleaners, an exhibition uniting the works of Tiziana La Melia (Vancouver) and geetha thurairajah (Brooklyn and Toronto). Through paintings and installation, both artists consider and unsettle conventions in painting addressing how histories are recoded and inverted. An incongruous, effervescent palette pervades the pictures: porous ocher, blue Monday and ultraviolet gather in a layered, ambiguous pictorial space to describe the irreconcilable forms from within interiors that are the surface and location for the uninvited.

For Tiziana La Melia, the house diagram becomes ascribe that not only marks the boundary of the unwelcome guest but defines it and allows it to be seen. The simple life becomes a substitute for abstraction and a way for the rural to find its way into the picture by reworking the autobiographical with an Aesop fable, taking place under gabled roofs. With the paintings of geetha thurairajah, the surface of the cave wall conflates with the screen becoming a liminal surface where seemingly irreconcilable referents connect through atemporal narrative. How are origin stories authored and who is left dis/possessed of power once they are written? These are questions thurairajah asks when examining how language can influence hierarchical representations within culture at large. In Ozone Gleaners, the potentiality of “alien” shadows become placeholders for misguided perceptions.

Biographies

Tiziana La Melia (b.1982) is an artist and author living and working in Vancouver. Early in her career she received national recognition for her work by winning the RBC Painting Competition in 2014. She received a Bachelor in English Literature from Simon Fraser University, a BFA from Emily Carr University (2010) and a MFA from Guelph University (2019). She has participated in numerous artist residencies such as the LA Mountain School in Los Angeles (2014), Parc Saint-Léger (2015), Triangle, Marseille, (2017) and at the Banff Centre (2016/2017). La Melia, a prolific author, recently published The Eyelash and the Monochrome (Talonbooks, 2018) and Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect, Selected Writing 2005-2018 which was at its second printing in 2018 with Blank Cheque Press. Recent solo exhibitions include Rust Daughters Say It With Flowers, Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Grande Prairie (2019); St. Agatha’s Stink Script, Galerie Anne Baurrault, Paris (2019); Global Cows, Damien and the Love Guru, Brussels 2019); Pet Parasite, Franz Kaka, Toronto (2018); The Pigeon Looks for Death in the Space Between the Needle and the Haystack, Unit 17, Vancouver (2018); Garden Gossip, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2017).

Recent Press
Hyperallergic: An Author’s Ode to Eyelashes by Rachael Guynn Wilson
Canadian Art: 10 Artists Who Work With Text by Steffanie Ling
Artforum: Tiziana La Melia by Lyllian Davies

geetha thurairajah (b. 1986) is currently based in Brooklyn. She received a BA from Wilfrid Laurier University (2010) and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2014). She was a finalist in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2016 and 2018 and received an Honourable Mention in 2018. She has taken part in recognized artist residency spaces such as Studio Residency at Interstate Projects in Brooklyn (2017), Fall Residency at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, Michigan (2017) and 2D Banff Artist in Residence in Banff (2015). Recent solo exhibitions include Migration is more momentous than ancient invasions, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo (2019); Mingling with flowers panthers’ eyes, The New Gallery, Calgary (2017); Shapeshifter, Projet Pangée (2017); Boons of Another, AC Repair Co, Toronto (2017); Goodbye here no matter where, 8-11 Gallery, Toronto (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Invisible Exports, New York (2019), Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland (2019), American Medium, New York (2018), Oakville Galleries, Oakville (2018) and Loyal, Stockholm (2017).

Recent Press
Akimblog: geetha thurairajah at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery by Kim Neudorf
It's Nice That: Geetha Thurairajah’s tablet-drawn paintings question art history and its meaningfulness by Rebecca Fulleylove
Canadian Art:10 Artists with Forward-Thinking Practices by Rea Mcnamara