★★★★★

rerylikes:

Tumblr Monday 43

Emma McNally | Emma McNally1 (b.1969, UK) - C19 (1). Carbon/graphite on paper, 100 x 140cm

We are pleased to have jacobvanloon for this Tumblr Monday to share with us one of his favorite contemporary artists, Emma McNally. Cartographers in the 12th century using engraving, brush and ink couldn’t have perceived the technological momentum which would allow modern maps to be digitized directly from high-definition photographs taken by satellites over 100 miles above the Earth. A map, much like a photograph, encapsulates the essence of an object otherwise in motion, as the continents continue their slow blossom over dancing waters. 

Emma McNally is a London-based Visual Artist. Her academic background comes from degrees she earned at York University in English and Philosophy. Her drawings are built with layers of precise markings; between which there is a constant murmur. She pushes the range of value uncharacteristically deep and wide for the media. The scale and presentation of her pieces alludes to wall-mounted maps, but the surfaces sometimes contain crease marks and blemishes, as if at some point they were used for navigation en route.

The slow, silent movements of the continental plates seem mostly innocuous, but are instigated by heat, pressure, gravity and magnetism of extreme measures underneath the surface. The cerebral cortex is ridged and grey, like the surface of a dead moon; and only with much closer investigation can the immense activity within be noticed. Where Mcnally’s works appear cartographic, what they chart appears to be internal. Nerve cells are relaying the message of another, dendrites absorbing, axons firing, all in the slightest fraction of a second— carefully frozen in time with graphite, carbon, and nails.

Emma McNally is participating in a group exhibition at Gund Gallery, Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio Through March 4, 2012.

[more Emma McNally on artchipel| Tumblr Monday with jacobvanloon*]

* Artist introduction by Jacob Van Loon (also Tumblr artist, cf. previous posts)