Hannah Petkau

ebb and flow

Untitled Arts Society (Cellar Gallery), Calgary, Alberta, November 9 - December 22 2018

Ebb and flow. Wax and wane. Let me collect the driftwood and shards of light left behind, expelled from the churning cycles that compel the ocean’s tide, force the watery molecules of our cells to dance awry when the moon calls full. The lunar effect, they say. I was born on a waning moon, and of all the organs to be influenced by this, they say it’s my heart. They say it’s my heart and the eddy it spurs: round from the tip of a finger to a heel to an ear lobe to a parietal lobe, on and on so long as a heart beats.

Our bones are really just rocks, particulate matter that migrated into flesh when we were pelagic creatures. Our blood is an ore deposit: iron, copper, manganese, cobalt. The stuff of an extractive industry. Our thoughts: small bolts of lightning. Our feelings: tremors of an earthquake. To be alive is to collaborate with the things we think of as other than us.

If I was born on the full moon, of all the things to be influenced by this, they say it’d be my hands.

Exhibition text: Natasha Chaykowski

Installation photos: Katy Whitt

between-ness

AFA Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX), Medicine Hat, Alberta, 2018- 2021

When we come out of hibernation

Five Art & Merchandise, Calgary, Alberta, March 23- April 15, 2018

Objects of Ambition

The Goat Shop, Calgary, Alberta, February 20 - May 18 2018

remnants

Marina & Cortes Island, British Columbia, 2017-2018

ambiguous implements

Ambiguous Implements is a collection of assemblages uncertain of their origin or intention. Manipulated by the artist’s hands and previous unknowns, the materials exist between a state of making and being made. Assembled together they become artifacts of the blurred differentiation between human and natural actions.

Old Schoolhouse Gallery, Cortes Island, British Columbia, August 5 - 14, 2016

ambiguous implements - in nature

photo credit : Sebastian Jarmula

ambiguous implements

Marion Nicoll Gallery Main Space, Calgary, Alberta, September 14 - 25, 2015

Catching the Ephemeral

Catching the Ephemeral is an assemblage of that which is not static or solitary. It is a manipulation of the artist’s hands and previous unknowns, blurring the differentiation between human and natural actions. There is an intentional ambiguity to the origin of the materials and their current state of being, suspicious of the beauty and value that is implied through interactions.

Stride Gallery +15 Space, Calgary, Alberta, August - September, 2015