Drips - collaboration by Jacquelyn Bortolussi & Danielle Proteau - review by Debora Alanna - first published 26 November 2013 on exhibit-v

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Drips - Collaboration by Jacquelyn Bortolussi and Danielle Proteau Review by Debora Alanna

‘Art that is meant for the sensation of the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light and colour art.’ ~ fromParagraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) by Sol LeWittDrips examines the perception that insular experience can be focus for engagement, that physicality can be dripping nodes of comprehension. Drips eases us into self examination.
A collaborative three part installation by Jacquelyn Bortolussi and Danielle Proteau, Dripsinvolves three investigations of dripping water. In a dark alcove, under a metal pail, a speaker amplifies the dynamics of water on the lid, triggers the water above the speaker, the constancy of a projected drip, which is anticipation and resolve seen on the wall reverberating the pictorial synthesis of the simplicity of letting out something, all, with visual depiction of the soundly dropped.


A hang man drawing shaped tubular apparatus with a high overhead dropping devise is poised over a target as a small single yellow drum amplifies single drips with its engineering.

Third, a large wood slat platform stands below a lathe of water dripping hoses systematically sprinkling water. With a constructed umbrella stand holding a yellow umbrella that invites use, participants can employ the bright umbrella for protection against the fall, succor, allowing the audience to engage with the work.


The yellow of the spot drum and umbrella concur. With each enactment, there is assent, and acceptance of natural falling phenomena of wet and whetting natures, by design.Drips speaks of inconstancy or impermanence, uneasiness, the consubstantial within each staging and together.

Drips is a query about existence. The projection of the reverberation of a water dropping in the darkened recess is the visceral hint of how encapsulated realization succeeds in discomforting. The yellow drum drip exacts responsibility, delineates response, and shows how acclaiming the dropped drip as an intention succumbs to inevitability. The persistence of continuous dripping from the reticulated replete on the isolated stage acquires assistance within the umbrella of relief to shelter from the storming, shading. The fear of deluge, as in the inundation of information is thwarted, by choosing sunny fortification from overhead charges. The ideal arrangement is a welcome happenstance to rectify life’s spitting, holds promise.
Drips is blithe, describing the insubstantial essence of humanity with sociability echoed in the three configurations made to authenticate the intervals between what we feel and know that cannot be measured. Drips mitigates space as a reverberating pulse or single beat or an approachable springing allowing irregularity between each configuration –the tentative enlivens. Drips delivers ambiguity as emotive power with the delicate touches of drips, which the concord of dripping perceptibly articulates. The free falling of the equivocal as poetic drips are meditations on the satiability of being.
Debora Alanna

Fifty Fifty Art Collective Gallery
2516 Douglas Street
Victoria BC
15 - 24 November 2013