Sculpture

Split Axes - 1995

1/2

Axe handles, metal clips, wood glue, wood filler & varnish
3' x 12' x 2"
Split w/ an axe and then repaired
Collection of Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax NS

Ingrid Jenkner: “Kelly Mark Works” Halifax: MSVU Art Gallery, 1995 (catalogue excerpt)

"In the case of Split Axes, individuation within uniformity arises from a single act repeated on a quantity of identical objects. After sustaining a violent blow at the top, which split them to varying degrees, the axe handles were filled and varnished over the length of the split. Each now displays the mark of its difference as a scar. (An earlier “Hits” series entailed striking objects against one another or against surfaces, and exhibiting the marked or deformed results). The resemblance of the bladeless aces to bones or limbs gains force in the presence of the sawn-apart or “dismembered” Mended Stool, which grows almost poignant as a metaphor for the embodied subjective experience.

The visible accumulation of acts performed on objects builds a history into these works. Characteristically, the possibility of narrative is both advanced by thematic linkages that permit metaphorical operations, and rescinded by the laconic, affectless presentation. As if to warn the viewer away from private territory, the latter strategy signals the artist’s distrust of the autobiographical gesture. But, by resisting the assignment of a storytelling function to representational elements in her work, Mark licenses a critical response that undercuts their referential illusion. Mark’s selection and deployment of objects associated with gender-specific household tasks hints at a bi gendered subjectivity. The kitchen and the pantry appear to merge with the home workshop and the tool shed. The processes used to assemble the work also resemble clichéd household tasks – readymade for nomination as art processes via a numbing repetitiveness that also aligns them with factory work.”

exhibition history>
1995 Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (Halifax NS); 1996 Mercer Union Gallery (Toronto ON);