Pat Durr’s Chaos at the Ottawa Art Gallery

Pat Durr: Persistence of Chaos closes on June 3, and you know as well as I that the date will come and pass with the blink of an eye unless you commit to seeing this exhibition.

Dreams of Black Rainbows, by Pat Durr at Ottawa Art Gallery. (Photo by Peter Simpson, Ottawa Citizen)

It’s worth it. The Ottawa Art Gallery’s choice to showcase the talented and accomplished artist/activist is a good one. First of all, Durr’s a local artist and her message is timely: “While navigating between distinct media, she has engaged with subject
matter ranging from overt political commentary, to the destruction of

environmental habitats, to a more concentrated interest in the waste
produced and consumed by society; all intermingled with personal
experiences and narratives. In 1987, she wrote, “Central to my work,
whether it is formal or allegorical, is a celebration of life and its
complexities.”

Durr effectively summed up a relationship
she has consistently explored in her work: the interplay between life,
as represented by the cyclical, orderly nature of things, and its
complexities, as represented by personal experiences and environmental,
political and social interventions. The resulting investigation is of
the excitingly chaotic interaction of these parts, and indeed, of our
being in the world.

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