March 3 – April 15, 2023
The Art Incubator Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday March 3rd, 7 -10 pm
Free admission
An inky haze, the static of radio, a soft and quiet fidelity, deep blue and violet like the night. Through the static many voices emerge.
The exhibition, Radio Becomes Clear, is a conceptual conclusion of Andrew Thorne’s year-long visual diary of his woodcuts and etchings, culminating with the installation of his exhibition in Harcourt House’s Art Incubator Gallery. This body of work also includes written excerpts from journals and other diaries.
Radio Becomes Clear is about the ways in which we record our lives and how our entanglement with devices such as printmaking, writing, and new media can be both enriching and disorienting. In Thorne’s expressive body of work, journaling, paper ephemera, and collage find their way into his woodcuts, etchings, monotypes, and digital prints, exhibiting how paper has a memory of its own, able to transcribe our day-to-day lives. This exhibition presents the artist’s compelling point in the ongoing discussion on how media can be used to ground oneself in the moment or become lost in a cloud of thoughts.
Hand tracings are a lead motif throughout this exhibition. While recording his own presence, the artist is also drawing a symbol of connection, support, and community. The hand uplifts, it motions upwards and speaks to the voices of many. In carving this image, the artist is asking how we can reimagine our communities. How can our media and public spaces be redefined to hold and serve all people?
Though the artist does not propose direct answers to these questions, the act of carving forms a base to contemplate possible ways forward. Journaling itself may not seem radical, however, it presents an alternative solution to re-imagining the future. Radio Becomes Clear is an exhibition about the voices held within the noise of debris, the scraps of living that can be harnessed and charged with vision.
Artist’s Biography
Andrew Thorne is an emerging, Edmonton-based multi-media artist, educator, and art activist. Born in Mi’kma’ki (Moncton), New Brunswick, he received an interdisciplinary Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the NSCAD University in Halifax in 2022. Thorne is drawn toward mediums that hold the capacity to share and offer the potential for discovery. These media have recently involved woodcutting, copper etching, and the exploration of sound.
In 2021, Andrew Thorne participated in the SNAP Emerging Artist-In-Residence, where he developed a series of large-scale woodcuts. This body of work was part of In the Weeds, an outdoor group exhibition at Lowlands Project Space, and also showcased in his solo exhibition, Carving Room, at SNAP Gallery. In the last year, Thorne has also had his print work featured in the SNAP at 40 Anniversary Portfolio, the Slow Down & Resist Portfolio at MAPC, and a sound piece in blur, an embodied exploration at the intersection of performance, sound and theatre, organized by Mile Zero Dance. In October 2022, Andrew Thorne concluded his artist’s residence program alongside his collaborator Anna Wildish, at the Yorath House in Edmonton’s Buena Vista Park.
Andrew Thorne is passionate about art-making practices that are becoming more accessible through art education and programming. Thorne teaches printmaking classes at SNAP, as well as drawing and other art-making courses at the City of Edmonton Arts Center.
Top Image: Synapse (detail), silkscreen, woodcut, 2022
Photo courtesy of the artist
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