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Paper mache of female figure. Looking through the side of her eye. view from side profile.

Jessica

Papier-mâché, 51 x 43.18 x 30 cm., , 2012. Collection of Dave Hayden

Fourth floor, Walper Hotel. 

Jessica is a papier-mâché sculpture depicting the character Jessica from Lockhart’s 2012 animation of the same name. The Jessica character is imagined as "feminine" with her blond hair, red bikini, red lipstick, red nails, and black heels with white socks. Jessica represents the “hoity-toity,” the average or even below-average, yet possesses a feminine and determined power.

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SIX PENCIL DRAWINGS

Graphite on paper, 2018

Show and Tell Coffee, 30 Ontario Street North, Kitchener.

Amy Lockhart is an animator who uses drawing to develop her characters before bringing them to life in her videos. We can see reoccurring themes in the drawings: partial bodies and limbs, exaggerated proportions and bizarrely non-functional bodies that seem more than the sum of their parts. The artist focusses on particular details: styled hair, cartoon breasts and high heels. In contrast to the simplified contours of her figures, she dedicates considerable attention to detailing bouffant hairstyles and Victory curls reminiscent of 1940s, and emphasizes lips, long eyelashes and pencil-thin eyebrows. Her figures are at once elegant and awkward, comical and sublime. 

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Rick's Baby Crib

Interactive web site, 2017.

Show and Tell Coffee, 30 Ontario Street North, Kitchener.

Welcome to the dark depths of the Internet in Rick’s Baby Crib and enter the mind of Amy Lockhart and her characters. Pecky, Liz, Margo, Molly, Betta Days, and Ludwiga are vulnerably dressed with prosthetic noses and heavy make-up, and they live in grimy and grungy squalor. By clicking on the TIP button, the characters will variously pose, play music, dance, check their phones, smoke, or just lie bored on their beds. 

In Rick’s Baby Crib (Babyssscrib.com) Amy Lockhart explores different ways of creating narrative and world building using the technology and aesthetics of the Internet. Rick’s Baby Crib is a live-action version of an animated short, Those Shoes, which was commissioned by Super Deluxe in 2017.

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Catalogue entries by Tess Martens with Gordon Hatt.

 

About the artist

amy.jpgAmy Lockhart is a filmmaker, animator and artist. Her animations have screened at festivals nationally and internationally, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival and International Animation Festival in Hiroshima, Japan. Lockhart has received fellowship at the National Film Board of Canada and support from the Canada Council for the Arts. She has completed residencies at Calgary’s Quickdraw Animation Society, Struts Gallery, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The California Institute of the Arts. Drawn & Quarterly published Dirty Dishes, a book of her paintings, sculptures and drawings in 2009. Her work was recently included in Afterimage at DePaul University Art Gallery and Not Bad For London at Michael Gibson Gallery. Amy Lockhart received her MFA from the University of Guelph in 2013 and is currently Assistant Professor, Animation, at the School of Cinematic Arts, Depaul College of Computing and Digital Media, Chicago.

About her work she says “I’m interested in the feminine because it has a power for me. Feminine is often seen as shallow, weak, passive, easily consumed. But it’s not . . . True strength is vulnerability and on the flip side niceness/pleasantness can be quite sinister.”(1)

(1) "Amy Lockart," Interview with Edwin Rostron, Edge of Frame: A blog about experimental animation, July 2014, <http://www.edgeofframe.co.uk/amy-lockhart/>, Accessed 28 Jan. 2019.

rwafhorcol [Converted] 2.jpgCAFKA @ The Walper 2019 has been made possible with the support of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund and the Walper Hotel.