Colleen Wolstenholme
Untitled from the series Shifty Packets
2013

Name: Untitled from the series Shifty Packets
Brand: Colleen Wolstenholme
Price: 900 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

What happens when the digital and analog duke it out? Who would win in this match: the printing press versus a high-speed internet connection? Or do we have to choose? What happens when you toss neural chemistry, especially abnormal psychology, into the mix? Colleen Wolstenholme studies the brain for her PhD research at York University. Her current exhibition at Art Mur consists of drawings and models that engage in the process of this research. The exhibition is about process rather than product, and ideas as much as form. These are experiments, much like the chemistry of our brains, much like the rapid progress in digital technologies. Our neurons are like switches, synapses dancing. The title of this show is The Shifty Packets of the Digital Realm, denoting the moving targets of our internal systems and external technologies, and how the analog (modernist) is being replaced by the digital (mechanized), altering human society, culture and our collective thought processes. Wolstenholme is a brave, confident fabricator. She is new to electronic engineering, and some of the works in this exhibition are testaments to this recent endeavor. Her work has always been multi-modal, maximizing many mediums. She conjures a hyperbolic nostalgia for the cult film Valley of the Dolls (re-framed from an ultra-feminist perspective), Pop Art, and the colourful, clean aesthetic of Canadian art stars General Idea. She can be a minimalist and a maximalist, sometimes in the same piece. The artist dispenses viewers a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals that seem to be potent medicines, candy confections and cast placebos all at once. She gestures to an understanding of all kinds of different drugs and how they work on the the brain, increasing awareness regarding mental health issues and acting as an advocate for people that take drugs to ease their diseases. Whereas her earlier work was grounded in images, Wolstenholme now moves to abstraction and concept in her art, delving deeper into the brain and its inner workings.

Creator:

Colleen Wolstenholme (1963, Canadian)

Creation Year:

2013

Dimensions:

Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Diameter: 12 in (30.48 cm)

Medium:

Paper,Ink

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Montreal, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU4762307881

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Shop All Colleen Wolstenholme

Colleen Wolstenholme

Best known for the jewelry and figurative sculptures based on a range of pharmaceutical drugs that garnered her widespread notoriety in the late 1990s, prolific artist Colleen Wolstenholme has also created abstract drawings and other works over the years that continue to stimulate dialogue and attract attention.

Born in 1963 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Wolstenholme became interested in visual arts while studying fashion design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After earning her bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1986, she continued her studies and received her master’s degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1992, where she specialized in metal and jewelry arts.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Wolstenholme worked with a range of mediums such as jewelry, sculpture, digital collage, painting and embroidery to create art that served as social criticism. Beginning in the mid-1990s, she made oversized plaster-cast sculptures and silver or gold jewelry that took the form of antidepressant pills and capsules in order to address several issues, including the fact that drugs are prescribed at disproportionate rates to women versus men, that the healthcare industry is overly reliant on prescribing drugs, and that anyone in treatment and on a course of medication is generally made to feel less healthy than those who aren’t. Wolstenholme’s provocative work made headlines in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and Psychology Today.

Wolstenholme’s art has also seen her unpacking her interest in the human brain. This is demonstrated in such abstract sculptures as Deviant Grid, the “Matrix Index” series and Spatial Anomaly in which she depicts the brain’s neurons. In her “Hyperobjects” series, Wolstenholme also focuses on systems that “humans have little power over but control and constrain us.” These include figurative drawings and abstract drawings of wind patterns, titled with geographical coordinates.

Wolstenholme’s art is part of the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

On 1stDibs, find a range of Colleen Wolstenholme sculptures, drawings and watercolor paintings.