Marsel Reddick
on Burial Grove by Megan Hamilton
Through the windows of the Marion Nicoll Gallery (MNG), in the centre of the room, sits a spiral maze of river stones. Ghostly photo-transfers on unstretched canvas and stained glass are crudely tacked against the walls. The canvas hangs ruggedly, curling and fraying like lost garments. The stained glass are remnants of an unknown structure, suggesting a distant time and place where the sun once shone through them. The squareness of the MNG provides a possibility for the invocation of cardinal, ritualistic energy, and Megan Hamilton’s Burial Grove actualizes this potential. In each corner of the room, piles of salt act as cleansing, protective entities within a realm made for the contemplation of death and grief. The salts cast a circle within the gallery and imply timelessness like undisturbed sand in an hourglass. The stone labyrinth in the centre represents an act of travelling in and out: the anticipation and reflection that bookend a journey. The salts and stones are tools which amplify each other and lend a sense of intention, lightness, and sacredness to the atmosphere while viewers are encouraged to meditate upon the heaviness of loss.
The combination of abstract gestural painting with photo-transfers speaks to a continuum of spirit and flesh. The moody brushstrokes, which emulate the colours of day-old bruises and murky rivers, represent the interplay of time within the unknown and in-between. The process of creating gestural abstract paintings is unplanned and intuitive, contrasting with the intentionality of photography. The paintings were created without forethought as a cathartic release of grief and inertia. Photo transfers tiled into the shapes of window frames act as metaphorical portals into ambiguous pasts. The interrelations between these mediums marry the known and unknown, landing in a space that hovers between reality and dreams. Burial Grove is a threshold. Windows are a repeated motif throughout the exhibition, implying fragmentation and distortion like that of distant memories. Even the front wall of the gallery is a series of windows; before stepping into the space, a portal is already active.
The imagery in the photo transfers depict elements of nature, religion, architecture, and decay. These images are frozen in time, embodying something that once was but no longer is, lingering in a state of unending transition. Materials borrowed from nature – wood, stone, bodies – inevitably begin to return, weathering and decaying. Crosses symbolize grave markers and Christianity, introducing the possibility for archetypal interpretation of all of the other symbols in the space. Trees, in their long lifespans and fixed positions, suggest silent histories, accumulation, and reinforce the gradual passage of time. Water connotes life and death in every way – we are primarily made of water, and a lack or excess of it can be deadly. Moths and spiders connote the death and birth cycles within nature. Hamilton states:
“Moths and spiders are kind of token symbols of death or goth. [They] have become cliché in representing the “dark” side. They both take and create. Moths eat your clothes, spiders eat other bugs, but moths create silk and spiders create webs. These creatures live on the borderline.”
Each of the symbols used in the photo transfers act as mirrors into our subjective emotional experiences. They are access points, allowing us to place ourselves in the role of the melancholic griever. Like Tarot cards, the images converse with each other to reveal to the viewer something about their own emotional apprehension of the world. Hamilton describes graffiti as “this invisible way of existing but claiming space at the same time.” The graffiti shown in the work appears layered and aged, an indication that the space it exists in is not valuable enough to be maintained. Abandoned spaces imply potential for renovation and erasure of the past. When this occurs, residue of the past is contained in memories, objects, and photographs.
Hamilton discusses this way of continuing a relationship after someone has passed as “an act of holding on while letting go.” Burial Grove acts as a place to take a pause, while reminding viewers that even these seemingly frozen moments are transitory. The act of exploring the exhibition is analogous to the way we experience relationships; we enter an unknown world, rich with history, emotion, and potential. In this perceived stillness, we are asked to consider how the decay of something is also its renewal.
Megan Hamilton, in conversation with the author, Apr. 25, 2023. Quotes used throughout the text are from this interview.
Check out the archive and documentation for the show written about above:
https://www.marionnicollgallery.ca/archive/20202024/megan-hamilton-burial-grove-10212022
About Marsel:
Marsel Reddick is an artist and writer whose research focuses on the constitution and dissolution of the self. In their practice, they consider the ongoing entanglements of self and otherness through a variety of media such as claymation, spatialized sound, comics, and interactive performance/installation.