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Lou’s Eyes is a photo and text based installation.
In this new body of work Rachelle Viader Knowles uses her close
friend Louise Lockwood as her subject. Louise suffers from a congenital
disease called retinisa pigmentosa that is causing both her retina
to deteriorate from the outside in. As a result, she experiences
severely limited peripheral vision and lives with the knowledge
that she will likely loose her sight. This project does not explore
the particulars of the disease. Rather, the text element becomes
the rationale for positioning Louise as the subject of a project
about two perspectives of seeing - looking out and looking in.
The installation Lou’s Eyes features two elements: a series
of ten photographic ‘constructions’ and a series of
textual fragments that will run along the top and bottom of the
gallery walls.
The textual elements are drawn from Lou’s own writings about
her personal experience of seeing. The photographic element of
the exhibition has not been shot by Knowles, but she selected
the images from a vast family album. Consequently, her work acts
as an ‘intervention’ into Lou’s family photo
album and into the photographs themselves. In this regard, the
work is not only a collaboration with Louise but also a collaboration
with the members of her family who have taken the pictures.
Rachelle Viader Knowles is an artist working in a broad range
of contemporary media including lens, time and text based installation.
Born in 1969 in Bristol, UK, Rachelle grew up in Cardiff, Wales.
She received a Foundation Certificate in Art and Design from Cardiff
College of Art, Wales, UK (1988) and a BA Honours Fine Art (Interactive
Arts) from the University of Wales College Newport, UK (1993) before
moving to Canada in 1994 to pursue her MFA Visual Arts (Multi Media)
at the University of Windsor in southern Ontario. She graduated
in 1996.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including
the 3rd Kwangju Biennale in South Korea (2000) and a solo exhibition
of installations and public projects Home and Other Fictions held
at Chapter Arts Centre in Wales GB and MacKenzie Art Gallery Regina,
Canada (2003). Selected solo exhibitions include We Are Not Who
We Were, Neutral Ground Gallery, Regina (2002); In Time, YYZ Artists’
Outlet, Toronto (1999) and Surface Tension, Art Gallery of Windsor
(1998). Rachelle Viader Knowles is represented by Peak Gallery in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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