You are here: Home / SCA Galleries / Program

You Are Here (the Paper Maps)

Peter Dykhuis

You Are Here (the Paper Maps), an exhibition by Peter Dykhuis, will open at Sydney College of the Arts on Wednesday 13 May, 6 to 8pm. The exhibition is held in collaboration with Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, with travel support from Canada Council for the Arts. The works in this exhibition illustrate geo-political territories, continental barometric pressure maps and the artist’s social interconnectivity on materials as diverse as used envelopes, business cards and disposable paper plates.

Three of the works in this exhibition are paper-based projects selected from the larger 2007 exhibition titled You Are Here that was curated by Robin Metcalfe, Director/Curator of the Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The fourth, My House and the War Machines (For Paul Virilio), is a new, ‘paper map’ addition. Dykhuis’ conceptual parameters, however, are not limited to only spatial mapping and graphic representations of territory but extends to objects, images and materials that create social, political and economic profiles of the artist’s life, context and environment. Consequently, Dykhuis’ paper maps are executed on materials as diverse as used envelopes, business cards and disposable paper plates, generating playful tension between the images generated and the materials that they are produced on.

Dykhuis was born in London, Ontario, obtained a BFA from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1978 then worked in Toronto, Ontario, before moving to Halifax in 1991 where he currently resides. He has exhibited extensively in Canada as well as in solo and group shows in the United States, Japan and Austria. You Are Here (the Paper Maps) is Dykhuis’ first exhibition in Australia.

You Are Here (the Paper Maps) will be on display at Sydney College of the Arts from Thursday 14 to Sunday 31 May 2009. Opening Wednesday 13 May, 6 to 8pm.
Gallery hours: Wednesday to Friday, 11am to 5pm. Saturday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm

Image: Peter Dykhuis, detail from Pressure Today, Sharpie marker on used envelopes, 2004-2008, 1176 envelopes, each 4” x 9.5”.