The featured exhibit runs June 1 – 30, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: June 1 at 2:00 pm

 

Artist: Laurel Westlund

 

 

Artist Statement:

FALCONET is an installation of silkscreens that playfully depict a landscape of recurring nightmares. Arising from an unconscious mind confronted with uncertainties and nebulous fears, these skeletal ‘memento mori’ figures forge their way through the battles unphased. In this dreamlike realm they remind us to confront the fear of our inevitable mortality and find the beauty in the present moment. Drawing from Medieval imagery, the prints are created using hand-cut stencils screened onto wood, cut out and layered together. A collage of bold linework, saturated colours, and hints of lurid fluorescent hues- hidden layers emerge into glowing night scenes that only appear in the dark.

 

Laurel Westlund is an Edmonton-based visual artist with a background in Printmaking and Classics from the University of Alberta. With a love of history, and a touch of the absurd, her work uses themes of crisis to explore the nature of fear in our lives.