Soft Stories

Photographs: Laura Jane Petelko
Words: Holly Venable
Creatures: Sara Wood

Soft Stories opens August 19th from 7-9pm with a signature cocktail inspired by Wilding. Please RSVP.

This collaboration of photographs and words draws on themes of desire, longing and the potential for ecstatic awakenings.

Photographs by Laura Jane Petelko

Recently exhibited in Times Square, this work was inspired by a conversation about the “Furry” subculture. Photographed by Laura Jane Petelko on Nova Scotia’s barren coast, the figures are dressed in meticulously hand-crafted costumes by designer Sara Wood. They convey a collective longing to commune with the very nature that we are ever losing touch with, while at the same time consuming. This work is about the world we tread upon with need and appetite, our growing isolation and the longing that invariably exists behind the artifice. The rugged Canadian landscape allows us to access a majesty that subsumes our human and sometimes awkward attempts at communion, enveloping us in its quiet indifference.

See the whole Soft Stories series.

Words by Holly Venable

The birdlike figure in Wilding is grounded, no longer able to fly. In one final desperate attempt to lift off the ground, she flings herself forward and, captured in the pleasure of the movement of dance, is transformed and essentially earthbound.

Further All the Time addresses our growing descent into self-isolation and the deleterious effect of a life that relies on digital technology. It conveys hope of picking up a signal outside ourselves that will jolt us into searching for an analogue to reconnect and make our existence viable. The words used are a rearrangement of radio terminology. The word herz without the ‘t’ is German for heart. The final lines in each stanza are lyrics borrowed from the song Transmission by Joy Division.