It’s rare to hear an artist self-identify as an “Outsider.” It suggests a self-reflexivity that jars with its very genre, a class of perceived deviants, anomalies, eccentrics, and the self-taught. It’s a band that typically promotes a lack of self-awareness, even a resistance to categorical determinations. To identify as such suggests one has chosen to the attic above our society’s established house. The Outsider’s self-assignation suggests a pride of place after an abiding search for home.

Pandora was entrusted with a large jar. The gods gave it to her for safe keeping. She was supposed to keep the lid on tight, but she opened it because she was curious to see what was inside, and evil spilled all throughout the world. The ancient Greek myth assures us that Hope was still […]

The fantastical meets the hackneyed in Jordan Maclachlan’s expansive Ways of Living, a detailed menagerie of other-worldly creatures, animals, and humans, too. The clay figures that populate her installation engage in various activities ranging from the banal to the perverse, and we are invited to peer into this universe and, therein, identify ourselves.

MacLachlan's piece has a strong intimation of storytelling. It features a circle of muskox between which surreal, humanesque figures seem to be emerging. The muskox herd is placed in its traditional circular defensive positioning with heads pointed outwards. At the centre of the circle, the old, young and vulnerable are usually protectively located but, in this instance, are conspicuously missing.