Meaghan Hyckie

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation

March 24, 2018 – April 21, 2018

The Olga Korper Gallery is proud to present “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation” the inaugural and highly-anticipated solo exhibition of Meaghan Hyckie’s drawings. Meaghan has been a member of the gallery roster since 2016. Last year her work was showcased in three fairs (Toronto, Montreal, and Miami), two site-specific exhibitions, and in the annual Casey House Art with Heart auction in Toronto. The Exhibition will open Saturday March 24^th from 2-5pm and remain on view until April 21^st.

Meaghan uses perspective drawing and drafting techniques as scaffolding for the structure of each drawing. She explores the extent of visual depth and space a single page will allow, literally “making room.” The exhibition can be divided aesthetically into two camps: cloud drawings (UFOs, Computer Clouds, Free Convective Mother Clouds), and house drawings (Housework, Blocks, New Build). Meaghan’s intention with each series was to develop iconic images that resound within the human psyche from an early age: the fluffy cloud, the house made of a square and a triangle – and then inject them with a historical and cultural context.

“I like working with icons that have become inert, even clichéd. Then I try to wake them up through a process that is repetitive and labour-intensive. I like to spend a lot of time with my work and use that time to cultivate a certain energy: it could be a kind of stillness or velocity or wrongness or harmony. Working with limited imagery allows me to be more free to experiment with format and material possibilities in my work, while creating a weird intimacy with such ubiquitous iconography.”

UFOs and Computer Clouds pull directly from a retro aesthetic (currently undergoing a fantastic resurgence in fashion and film), combining the child-like wonder of the dark unknown found in Tron and Stranger Things with the western-meets-science fiction blueprint employed in Westworld and the original Star Wars. The drawings leave you feeling entranced and engaged with something surreal, threatening and fast-paced that hums as you watch it come at you – vooom – like a lightsaber, or a starship in space. The way two simple notes, when paired together, can suddenly set your heart racing as you search the waves for a grey fin: duh-dum.

Meaghan’s fascination with space, not the cosmos, but BIG OPEN SPACES – is investigated to new limits in her sibling drawings: Rangeand John Connor & Patsy Cline inspired by The Big Country, a classic cowboy film directed by William Wyler that captures the archetypal American south-western landscape and how it breeds good and bad American men and women. The vast silent landscape itself making any human conflict seem small and insignificant. Meaghan explores these ideas as they relate to the psychology and aesthetics of space.

In Housework and Blocks, we can see Meaghan’s deep-dive into Canadian post-war housing as it relates to her own childhood nostalgia, the history of this country, and its future growth. Using vintage advertisements as titles for her pieces, there is the impression that the once idealized homestead as a part of community and belonging has been levelled and transformed into the condominium concrete boxes of individual consumerism and isolation. The blend of optimism and anxiety that surrounded the post-war period in Canada is as relevant as ever.

Meaghan’s work is deeply conceptual and utterly meticulous; but most importantly it is firmly rooted in the contemporary Canadian zeitgeist. Her research into Canada’s architectural history simultaneously pays homage to and reflects on defining moments of post-war growth and cultural change. Through her drawings both small and large in scale, she approaches the mood of the post-boom generation, giving form to climatic, environmental, and architectural anxieties that will shape this country over the course of the next century.