Victorian Things

Items

• Hannah Claus's "interlacings"
  “interlacings,” a looped projected animation, features a red-bordered octagon centred within a black space. Inside the border, concentric rings rotate in different directions, resembling a kaleidoscope as each ring slowly transforms from one pattern to another. The unmoving red octagon frames the animation with intricate Victorian designs accented with white and orange details. While some of the images included here and the video of the piece that is accessible online may look like a decontextualized digital mandala, the work originally existed as an installation. In the gallery, “interlacings” was projected onto the gallery floor and surrounded by a bed of pine needles that dried out over time, alluding to fading memories of the local landscape. Initially, the projection looks uniformly Victorian, bringing to mind the types of designs popularized by William Morris, but as the inner rings shift and patterns morph out from the darkness, they highlight edible plants and flowers native to the Secwepemc territory (Kamloops, BC). For example, the outer ring spins rosehips, root vegetables, and raspberry bushes into bloom, while an inner ring includes roses and berries. These subtle transitions make it seem as though the piece itself is breathing, with greenery expanding out through an inhale and contracting in again through an exhale, but always remaining bound by the confines of the border.