Portals

10 Feb-9 Apr 2022

Overview

The artists in this exhibition have all created portals of some kind – visible, conceptual, mythical or otherwise – leading viewers on a journey through the looking glass. Artists often frame either the outside world or their own inner world – presenting only what the creator wants us to see, configured inside of the boundary of the work. Yet even the most finite framing devices within this show suggest the possibility that they might also contain multiple fictional worlds, openings or thresholds to elsewhere. The restricted gaze of the traditional image allows only a frontal spectator-object relationship, but an artistic portal pulls the viewer in beyond the picture plane to experiences constructed within or behind its borders. This exhibition opens up the gallery space through a number of physical, metaphysical and metaphorical portals, offering passage to entirely speculative or abstract realities, new spatial possibilities and even paths through time.