Catherine Richards

Three New Artworks

Catherine Richards, Method and Apparatus for Finding Love, 2000.

Work in progress in collaboration with Martin Snelgrove. Reception desk, receptionist, non-disclosure agreement forms, four wall-mounted stainless-steel shelves, four copies of the patent application. Dimensions variable. Installation as part of the exhibition Excitable Tissues, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2000.
Detail view of patent application on shelf.

Photo: Tim Wickens. Courtesy of the artist.

Catherine Richards, Method and Apparatus for Finding Love, 2000

The Foundation's support enabled Catherine Richards to pursue her experimental, multidisciplinary approach in creating three new pieces: Shroud (2000), I Was Scared to Death; I Could Have Died of Joy (2000) and Method and Apparatus for Finding Love (2000). The first two works look at the connected or disconnected body of "electromagnetic material" in our new technologies; the last work takes up the fluid language of electromagnetism so as to reflect it in the equally slippery language of the emotions. In these pieces, which anticipate the technological simulation of the fertile ground of the emotions, the artist continues exploring the pressures, changes and contradictions that drive our understanding of ourselves, enmeshed as we are in these "technologies of representation."

Richards's new works were presented during Excitable Tissues, an exhibition held at the Ottawa Art Gallery from September 14 to November 19, 2000. In late 2001, this gallery produced a publication assembling writings on these works by Frances Dyson, N. Katherine Hayles and Dot Tuer.