Floating Pink Cloud
by E. M. Alysse Bowd
The Main Gallery, March 6 – April 18, 2020
Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, from 7 pm – 10 pm
Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, 3rd floor, 10215 – 112 St, Edmonton
Floating Pink Cloud is an exhibition of a series of four performance works enhanced by the artist’s striking ceramic objects and several artifacts of various provenances and meanings, that engages the viewer with ceremonies of consolement. This series considers the constant dialogue occurring within our mind – how we speak to ourselves, motivate and inspire ourselves, but also how we might be cruel and unforgiving to ourselves.
Navigating an interdisciplinary creative practice of object-making and performance, Bowd has a focus on non-linear narrative, female perfectionism, self-care, and personal mythology. Floating Pink Cloud is a body of work interested in re-inventing the gestures of daily routine. Ceramic objects have a history of providing daily comfort, the warm porcelain bathtub, the earthenware teacup, and using this material Bowd aims to incite new moments of self-care within the domestic routine. Between the piles of laundry and the dishes drying is the presence of life and toil, awareness and admittance. She seeks to harness the power of the scream into a porcelain vessel, wrap fears in a parcel of malleable earth, and build toy fences to protect and incase the arbitrary journals of the domestic routine.
Floating Pink Cloud is an image of perfection, a concept of a potential happiness that hangs just out of reach. A cyclical happily ever after that we are constantly in search for, though constantly obtaining with dissatisfaction – the boredom of happily ever after. There is always something else. Once one goal is achieved, another is made. The Pink Cloud simply Floats a little higher and a little further away.
E. M. Alysse Bowd
Artist’s Biography
E. M. Alysse Bowd is a Red Deer-based ceramicist and a conceptual artist. She holds a BFA in Ceramics from the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly the Alberta College of Art + Design) in Calgary and an MFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her creative practice navigates interdisciplinary explorations between object-making, live art, and drawing practices. Over the years, Bowd has investigated and discussed – in her body of works – several aspects related to societal notions of female perfectionism, the domestic, the role of objects in self-care, the uncontrollable, and the construction of personal mythology. Alysse Bowd is a recipient of numerous awards, scholarships, and commendations for her contributions to contemporary visual arts. She has participated in several international arts residencies in Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, and in Australia. Bowd maintains a studio practice in Red Deer, where she enjoys teaching part-time at the Red Deer College and at the Alberta University of the Arts. Bowd’s impressive body of works and multi-media installations has been the subject of several solo and group exhibitions that were held across Canada and abroad.
