Ocular Occurrences with Pam Patterson & Mel Rapp
Ocular Occurrences opens Sept 16 and runs until Jan 2025. Exhibit reception is Sept 30, 4.30 -6 PM. In exhibition, Patterson displays, in the vitrines, digital colour prints (that use eye scans, photographs, and topographical maps) overlayed with Amsler grids, designed to engage the viewer with how Patterson sees and processes images. What, she asks, is the disconnect between medical models and subjective experience? What can a body do to…? The seeming ineffectiveness of this exercise in locating sight is expressed in the accompanying video, Sites of Perception. Optician, designer and writer Mel Rapp exercises his theory of the intersection of observation, memory, and language by responding, in the vitrine, in writing to Patterson’s ironic images. In the two facing photos in the annex lounge, one sees closeup Patterson’s eye framed by one of Rapp’s iconic glassware designs. Here futility is recovered, redesigned, and transformed. Transformative Access: Activating Disability Desires