Supra

Ingrid Mary Percy

June 24 to July 31, 2005

Supra is a new series of drawings by Ingrid Mary Percy that proposes a relationship between scientific imaging and abstraction via popular culture. Made using a low-tech children’s toy (a Spirograph), the drawings challenge the authority of science and present a fantastical world of filigree, embedded in geometric forms that evoke microbial organisms and invisible systems.

In the 21st century pathogenic microbes inhabit our psyches and imaginations as much as they do our bodies. The drawings in Supra allow viewers to see these natural forms and systems as complex, independent and beautiful structures, detached from the disturbing implications and consequences of their existence in the natural world.

“Terra Nova,” a series of limited edition silk-screen prints distinct from, but nonetheless arising from the concerns of Supra will also be exhibited. Percy, while artist-in-residence at Terra Nova National Park in Glovertown, Newfoundland, researched natural plant forms, and distilled this information into powerful and disorienting abstractions where the worlds of genetic replication and design collide.

Ingrid Mary Percy studied visual art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver (BFA, MFA, 1995) and at the University of Victoria (MFA, 1997). Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions internationally for over ten years. She currently teaches painting and drawing in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Victoria.