Cover and Hide by Nikki Sirett                                      September and October 2024​

 

 

Nikki Sirett is a Saskatchewan-based visual artist from Vancouver, B.C. She received her Bachelor's of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2015, and moved to Saskatoon in 2021. She works primarily in acrylic paint, ink and chalk. A dabbler, a job-hopper, a re-starter, art is the one thing that has always made sense to her. 

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This exhibition centres around two pieces she made in her final year of art school. "Hide" consists of crow feathers pulled apart into individual barbs and poked through a piece of fabric. "Cover" is her largest and most intricate ink piece. Both titles deal in multiple meanings to do with transformation and obfuscation. "Cover" as a tangible excuse to stay home and work during a major upheaval in her life, and to "cover" the surface of paper in an explosion of claustrophobic, obsessive energy. "Hide" as an otherworldly animal pelt, and to "hide"-  a past/a thought/ a self. 

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Each piece in this exhibit attends to themes of concealment and disquiet through a creating process that is by contrast deeply still and meditative. Some titles are factual- "Triangles" is made up of the shape, "Cut" is works on paper cut up and rearranged. The way people will look at these pieces and be reminded of different objects

(maps, cities, tv static, etc.), some pieces imply several meanings, as is the case with "Mass: which refers equally to a weight, a congregation, a tumour. Three more recent pieces, "Hour of the Wolf", "Uneasy Dreams" and

"(Long Live) The New Flesh" take their names from cultural works- Bergman's only horror film, Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Cronenberg's Videodrome - concerning restlessness and an uncertainty about what is real. The newest of the these three, "(Long Live) The New Flesh", is more painting than drawing, and alludes to a new ear of work that is visually bolder and more gestural. 

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