Withdrawing to Quiet Places, 2023

Withdrawing to Quiet Places (2023) was made for Riley’s Senior Studio show, Untitled, at Trinity Western University. See the press release for the exhibition here!

 

Group Exhibition Statement

The Senior Studio class of 2022/23 brings together a unique variety of work in their show, Untitled. This course is for art students in their final year, culminating in an exhibition which represents each individual’s body of work. Through explorations with photography, installation, costuming, and illustration, to name a few, the artists develop a rich variety of skills to expand their own ways of working. Students also coordinate and curate the show as a team: designing, promoting, and forming statements to invite viewers to experience their gallery-ready creations. This prepares each artist to go out into the professional world after graduation.

This year’s exhibition’s name, Untitled, says several things about the student’s work. Firstly, it represents the variety and diversity of the artists’ pieces. The projects in this show display the complexity of life and how it is often impossible to contain ideas in a single word or phrase. Showcasing so many different perspectives called for a title that could give space for each of them to express their own story. From ethereal costumed silverfish to entering a room of painted eyes, this collection of work celebrates the artists’ unique and diverse experiences. Among the three exhibitions, viewers will encounter topics such as prayerful contemplation, empathy for the marginalized or forgotten, and a return to the cultural traditions of artists’ families.

Furthermore, many of our artists’ works explore the act of un-titling through their creative practices—allowing for a multiplicity of styles, subject matter, and media to coexist and interact. By encountering these stories and learning from the voices of others, viewers are invited to expand their own perspectives and engage in a fresh way. Untitled represents the many facets of experience and challenges the audience to view life through a new lens.

 

 

Riley’s Biography

Since she was a child, Riley Wiebe has loved to create from her home in Mission, BC and has expanded her craft during her time at Trinity Western University. She is studying to be an art and language arts teacher and has already begun this by teaching private art lessons. In her work, Riley often discusses themes of false identity, success and shame, polarization, and humanization. She creates eclectic sculptural paintings made of obscure mediums; one she was especially proud of involved a dresser, suspended from the ceiling, in the show Incomprehensible Lines: The Movement of Being (2022). Riley has also had art exhibited in SAMC’s In Review (2022), Identities: A Collection of Portraits (2021), and Plein Air (2020) through the Mission Arts Council.

 

 

Artist’s Statement

Riley Wiebe
Withdrawing to Quiet Places, 2023
Acrylic on canvas, drop cloth, mattress, bed frame, blankets, pillows, pins

Withdrawing to Quiet Places is a physical manifestation of prayer. Through the writing of phrases and abstraction of letters, my curious piece is frustratingly hard to decipher. Its illegible state reflects my private meditative process: I do not want to proclaim a loud message right now–but feel called to simply listen. My creation process simply involved talking with God and transcribing my inner thoughts in paint. The negative spaces between letters were filled with colour, eventually losing words entirely within the vibrant forms.

An interesting problem emerged when I came toward the end of the semester. I had to wrestle through the tension of bringing my inner dialogue into the outer world. I wondered about the significance of displaying a private experience so publicly. I addressed this by making my work into a bed–the place I often pray. My work stands in a tradition of artists like Tracie Emin, Robert Rauchenberg, and Ragnar Kjartansson who used beds in their work to portray the tension between public and private. This tradition of bed paintings matches my question about the strange vulnerability of bringing personal prayers into a gallery.

I discovered this conflict reflects my challenge with public prayer as a whole. I acknowledge the unifying power of congregational prayer, but solitude is more comfortable to me. The presence of community can be distracting: social anxiety, a desire to impress others, and the worry of being misunderstood can easily provoke superficiality. Similarly, I notice how easy it is for the purpose of my art to be lost in proving myself to an audience. How can work initially meant for solitude become a tool for corporate worship? There is cognitive dissonance in exhibiting a piece called Withdrawing to Quiet Places in a gallery which feels neither as withdrawn nor as quiet as the place where I made it.

 

 

Documentation