Kelly Richardson: Rapture and Critique

Canada-trained, UK-based artist Kelly Richardson has become well known for her thoughtful artworks that toy wittily with the cinematic. The effectiveness of these is demonstrated partly in the increasing reach of Richardson’s work, with recent shows in venues ranging from Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum to Buffalo’s Hallwalls Arts Centre to London’s Nunnery project space.

Accordingly, Richardson’s current show presents two new video installations (one a projection) on her signature theme. Twilight Avenger conjures Harry Potter movies, pagan myths and urban legends alike with a glowing (perhaps radioactive? Or drug-induced?) stag traversing a forest. Wagon’s Roll (The Remake), a redo of a 2003 work, has a car remain suspended in action-flick-climax mid-air while the surrounding landscape continues to change in a deadpan, mundane fashion.

Both of these videos reinforce Richardson’s characteristic blend of audiovisual rapture and cinematic critique, a sense previously demonstrated in her reworkings of horror films like Frogs, In the Company of Wolves and Swamp Thing, and also seen more recently in Exiles of the Shattered Star, which has fireballs rain down on an idyllic landscape. The results are always beautiful and apocalyptic, ridiculously silly and deadly serious—an appropriate mix for our jaded-yet-anxious age. (129 Tecumseth St, Toronto ON)