Shotgun Review: Excavations

And Val Britton’s walls. Her large-scale maps of her deceased father’s truck routes are, in the end, anything but mournful. Breaking from the traditional dependence on topographical ring work to provide movement, she’s able to elicit a deeply believable and somehow constant chaotic throbbing by way of slashes and physical overlay. They may have arisen from the static Rand McNally, but these beautified renderings of that lonesome profession seem less like maps than stories from daughter to absent father. While successfully holding entire rooms captive, it is in the lure of their three-dimensional detail that they are able to seduce the audience into their both bold and intricate narratives, marked by monumental lines and frail continents.

Chaz Reetz-Laiolo, June 11, 2007

Posted on June 11, 2007