Une chose la place d’une autre is a synthesis of Sara A. Tremblay’s visual and conceptual research of recent years; with it, she wants to show that all her work comes from the same ideas and that all its elements are interchangeable. The different techniques used and the various forms that each piece can take end up functioning as a single corpus. The parts orbit around one another, cohabiting autonomously and interdependently. A photograph of a drawing, a sphere as a portrait, and documentation of a performance all become performative. Each piece takes a different form, but exists because of its relation to the other works.

The work titled Portraits, one of the exhibition’s main projects, is comprised of seven images, each showing a sphere of clay. They represent family members and friends with whom she has shared relationships of love, friendship, hatred, or conflict. Made in winter 2012 from a single large piece of clay, these seven spheres are made with a mass of clay proportional to what the people they are modelled after mean to the artist. Ever since they were formed two years ago, the artefacts have changed; have taken on personalities. In Tremblay’s home they sat on a bookshelf, on the kitchen table, in the living room, and have served as bookends, paperweights, etc. Their stains, marks and scratches show that they have lived. The seven spheres will be present in the flesh, alongside drawings and photographs.

The artist would like to thank Simon M.Benedict, Maryse Arsenault, Martin Schop, ric Simon, Roger Proulx, Laurence Poirier, Craig Rodmore, and Anne-Marie Proulx.

Documentation:  Allan Kosmajac