An Education | Karlie King | Gallery 2

August 28th - October 17th, 2014

Karlie King, Geography, oak desktop with image transfers, 18.9" x 24.8", 2012. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

An Education brings together a body of work centred around found wooden desktops that artist Karlie King collected from Mervin School House, in her hometown of Mervin, SK. The building had been closed for a period of 20 years until eventually being demolished in 2010. What King salvaged were remnants of school days gone by, embossed with evidence of work, idle imagination and mischief. Inspired by the ghostly drawings etched into the desks, the artist began to explore "…educational topics, subjects and classes visually, using image transfers and printmaking techniques." In so doing, she was able to investigate a vast curriculum of the students' making. Political movements, music, math and the sciences, could all be related to doodles of swastikas, band names and equations. Using the pupils' graffiti as a point of inspiration, King then creatively reworked the desks with her own markmaking. She notes: "…these pieces speak about artistic tradition and the lineage and development of artistic expression… these desk tops are like riddles. They are touchstones in a web of relations and thought." Curated by Alex King