January 03 - 27, 2007

Melissa Day | Certain Insecurity | review

> opening Tuesday, January 04 | 4 - 8pm

Whistle and Shipwreck, video still, 2006 (Whistler: Catriona Day)

Shipwreck (study), 2006, oil & digital pigment print on canvas, 12” x 16”.

Shipwreck, 2006, oil & digital pigment print on canvas, 44” x 56”.

Golden Gate Bridge (study), 2006, oil & digital pigment print on canvas, 16” x 26”.

Golden Gate Bridge, 2006, oil & digital pigment print on canvas, 54” x 84”.

Doxology, 2005, video

Doxology, 2005, video

Whistle + Shipwreck, 2006, DVD projection

Whistle + Shipwreck, 2006, DVD projection

Whistle + Shipwreck, 2006, DVD projection

In Day’s latest video, ‘Whistle and Shipwreck,’ the searching and questioning of a whistled hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness," is paired with a sequence of footage of a tragic shipwreck the artist witnessed early one morning on the shores of Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands, California. (Ironically, Day had planned to write “Save me,” on the sand that morning.) After pairing these pieces together in a single work, Day found the accompanying blog uncovering the details of this tragedy.

The painted works on canvas, part digital pigment print, part oil paint, study and provoke this simultaneous, uncertain state. In 'Golden Gate Bridge’, the bridge has been painted out and the re-imagined landscape painted back in, although the shadow of the bridge remains. Half painted, half printed, touched and untouched, peaceful and unpeaceful, it exists, inexplicably, as neither one thing or the other.

Born in 1970, in London, Canada, Day now works in San Francisco, California. She received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Queen's University, Canada and Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1992.

Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows both in Canada and the U.S. including recent exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, New Langton Arts (San Francisco), Roam Contemporary (New York), the Cologne Online Film Festival and Photo Miami 06.
Recent awards include the 2005-6 UC Berkeley MFA Studio Award at the Headlands Center for the Arts, California, the San Francisco Foundation’s Murphy Fellowship in the Fine Arts and the Eisner Prize in the Creative Arts from the University of California, Berkeley.

She has taught in Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley and in the Art and Art History Program of Sheridan College and the University of Toronto, Mississauga.
Day is represented by Peak Gallery, Toronto.