OBorn Contemporary is pleased to host a warm and atmospheric evening surrounded by artist Kate McQuillens latest installation, Dead Reckoning. We invite you to join us for hot seasonal beverages and snacks as we mingle among the playful shadows and darkened corners of McQuillens large, sculptural forms and expansive wall-based mural.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

In Dead Reckoning, Kate McQuillen repeatedly uses acts of destruction to generate new images. Razor blades become drawing tools and fire burns shapes into her works on paper. The artist cuts up finished monoprints and, through the process of recombining the particulate remainders, creates a web of composite information. The resultant mlange is now a scramble of disassociated parts, the fragmented picture plane denying any comprehensive resolution or reading.

These assemblages take two formsa large wall piece composed of the described monoprinted segments and five tall, sentry-like pillars penetrating the gallerys space. Navigating these columnar structures is supremely physical, demanding orientation akin to the digital universe we have come not only to occupy, but also to abet. A remote relationship is struck between our singular physical bodies and our plural digital identities. The self and all of its attendant intangible parts have become ubiquitous, a paradoxically absent presence manifested by the voided silhouette extracted from the mural covering one entire wall. The artist manages to impose this dislocation on even those who dont enter the gallery as a visible glow penetrates the buildings glass faade, maintaining separation while still completely embroiled in its urban surroundings. The exhibition title is here, ironically, something of a foilmeant to describe a mechanism through which a persons location is tracked, Dead Reckoning only beckons at the potential information encapsulated by its structures. The thread sewn through this current installation is taut, tugging between the stasis of sophisticated technological mechanisms and the rapid circulation of data.