Title: Borealis (no longer on site)
Artist: Christy Thompson Exhibition year: 2003
Christy Thompson: Borealis is in large part built upon the precepts of illusion. It is a constructed and directed kind of seeing Thompson would have us engage in, evidenced in her sculptural articulation of a series of spurious geological objects carefully sited within an actual natural setting, and via the nighttime visibility of the rock artefacts which fluoresce when briefly illumined at night by a nearby light (a sight few visitors to this place would actually have the opportunity to witness). We have long used nature as a setting or even shelter for our dreams, fantasies, and illusions. And we have long projected whatever psychological, philosophical, social, political shapes we want onto it, rendering the natural world little more than a stage on which we might observe big and little dramas of Life playing themselves out. However, with Borealis, the cat is out of the proverbial bag. Thompson tries to fool no one, for this is a self-conscious theatricality in which we take part. In the end, there are simply artificial rocks and real grasses swaying in a wind that is of no ideological use to anybody.
Gil McElroy, "House and Garden (Some Sheltered Thoughts)," The Tree Museum, (The Tree Museum, 2002-2003)
Christy Thompson is a Toronto-based installation artist. She is the Director of The Red Head Gallery and teaches at The University of Western Ontario. Past exhibitions include "Carrying Wet Laundry & Starting Fires" at Tableau Vivant Toronto; FLEX at The Koffler Gallery Toronto; and offsite@toronto through Mercer Union and Kym Pruesse Toronto; Descriptions of what I think I know (2001), Truck Gallery, Calgary; Forest (2000), Pekao Gallery, Toronto; House Guests (2001-2002), AGO, Toronto.
 : 2003');)
 : 2003');)