Ross Bell - Sculpture

This interactive outdoor installation comprises six sculptures based on the Muk Yan Jong, or “wooden man post” used for training in the Wing Chun form of Kung Fu. Each figure is made from ash trees cut down because of the emerald ash borer. As an abstraction of the human body, Muk Yan Jong predate by several centuries similar modernist sculpture, which they resemble.

For Bell the exhibition title, Last Stand, evokes several tangential associations: the decimated ash trees of southwestern Ontario, a defensive military front, and the artist’s position as a maker of things in an increasingly virtual world.

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Chief Curator James Patten, McIntosh Gallery

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