Shelagh Keeley: Since 1980, I have executed large-scale drawings and wall-drawing installations that are site-specific and temporary. I use a range of materials: wax, pigment, chalk, crayon, oilstick, photographs and collage. In my installations, I am concerned with the recovery of space through instinctive gesture. The archetypal wall, its structure a monumental act of enclosure, speaks as a refuge of willed silence. Like the body, the room is a container and the walls are its skin. My drawings are concerned with the strength of vulnerability, fragility and slowness. They come from a space of intuition and instinctive intelligence. I want the drawings to be full of life force. To receive fullness by emptiness, the voice of pleasure creates an opening in the drawing…an exquiste vulnerability. I draw pleasure, sensuality, desire and eroticism.

Keeleys’ recent solo exhibitions include the following: a drawing installation with film at RAM FOUNDATION, Rotterdam (2008); a site-specific installation and exhibition in Shanghai (2009) selected by Jonathan Watkins curator of IKON Gallery in Birmingham, UK (artist book with an essay written by Watkins); a site-specific wall drawing at Ottenhuis and a solo show of drawings at the Drawing Center, both at Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, The Netherlands (2010); and a mid-career retrospective with catalogue originated by Robert Mclaughlin Gallery and McMaster Museum of Art is touring across Canada until 2012. Her work is also featured in Canadian and international group exhibitions: Visceral Bodies at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2010); Hysteria and the Body, National Gallery of Canada touring exhibition (2008-2009); and a selection of her artist books in an exhibition at Sagacho Archives, Tokyo, Japan (2011). Keeley was artist in residence at Western Front, Vancouver ( July 2010).

Keeley’s work is represented in numerous public collections, a selection of which includes the following: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Modern Art, NYC. She is on faculty at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Image: Shelagh Keeley, Drawing installation of 100 drawings at Kunstvereniging, Diepenheim, The Netherlands (2010), oilstick on paper, each drawing 22 x 33 inches, overall installation 15 x 35 feet