Eleanor King

Currently based in New York, Canadian artist Eleanor King employs strategies of repetition and repurpose to mine the potential, and trace the limits, of objects. Primarily built around mass-produced audio objects –- CDs, vinyl records –- King shifts between sculptural work that converts object repetition into gesture and drawings that trace one object repeatedly in an overlapping whole to achieve a similar notion of trajectory. Applying the term “riff” in context of King’s practice is an almost irresistible impulse, as the visual repetition recalls music’s allegiance to pattern and also accommodates the idea of variation. Throughout the work, King preserves and forwards sound as a component – an imprint in associated memory when not actual sound – rooting it in a moment and pointing, too, to the durational labour of their making and the visual rhythm of repeated gestures and forms. Eleanor King is a MFA candidate and Fulbright fellow at SUNY Purchase. Previously, King taught at NSCAD University and was Director at Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. King received a BFA from NSCAD in 2001, and participated in residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and The Banff Centre among others. She has received creation grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia, and was short-listed for the 2012 Sobey Art Award. King has exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably at Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and Galleri F15 in Norway. Her work is highlighted in a feature-length article in Canadian Art magazine, September 2014 and slated for a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in January 2015).