An installation of abstract painting and shredded silk, Snail’s Space responds to the slowness of an isolated year. Soaking, staining, folding, and ripping, require specific performative actions to make the work, as such, the shapes take on personas that can be read as extensions of the self. Through rehearsed and improvisational methods, Snail’s Space reveals notions of time, repetition, slow grieving, uncoiling and abstraction.
Artist Bio
Ashleigh Bartlett
Ashleigh Bartlett’s work is informed by a fascination with abstraction, theatricality, and questions that arise from the historical trajectory of painting. Bartlett has exhibited at Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, USA), Five Points Gallery (Torrington, USA), Nave Gallery Annex (Somerville, USA), Paniki Gallery (Batan, Philippines), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, Canada), TRUCK Contemporary Art (Calgary, Canada), The Art Gallery of Calgary (Calgary, Canada) and The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener, Canada). She is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Lieutenant Governor’s Emerging Artist Award, and a finalist in the 2014 RBC Painting Competition. In 2011, she earned her MFA from the University of Guelph. Bartlett has a collaborative practice with Jessica Groome called CIRCLES & WIGS. Together, they have exhibited in Canada, Norway, and the USA.
She would like to thank the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Alberta University of the Arts, for their generous support of the project. A special thank you to Mark Clintberg and Laura Findlay.
Bartlett currently lives and works in Calgary, Alberta. Her activities occur on the traditional Treaty 7 territories of the Blackfoot people including the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Piikani and Kainai), the Tsuut’ina (Sarcee), the Stoney Nakoda First Nations (Bearspaw, Chiniki and Wesley), and the Métis Nation of Alberta (Region III).