CANARIES

Canaries is a solo exhibition of Kentucky-native artist Sydney Hughes that meditates on the transience of place through projections of the Appalachian Landscape. These slow-fading glimpses of nature puncture through darkness to reveal portals of light. In the piece, "gaze into the burrow and the cavern gazes back," ephemera collected from the land surrounding Hughes' childhood home has been scanned and manipulated into a circular fluid arrangement. These objects, placed along a central table, invite viewers to contribute to their unrest, to arrange and rearrange. From above, a mounted trail camera captures these subtle movements and projects a preview to the exhibition entrance outside, greeting with a faint echo of what lies within. Adjacent portals position us within the cave alluding through light and shadow to the towering mountains on their back and the hollow mouths to deep caverns that lie beyond their thresholds. Auditory relics captured by Hughes from within cave opening invoke a sense of horror and curiosity, of steep mountain precipices and pitch-black depths. Should we venture onward, can we even turn back? The sublime horror of the unknown and of the monolithic place is conjured into sound and light—omens of rupture and passage, danger and sanctuary. Throughout history, the darkness of penetrating mountains and their vacuous caves have evoked mystery, and mystery's fear. They open into the underworld and are home to supernatural entities, making them apt backdrops for the hero's journey. In science fiction and conspiracy, they are speculative gateways to hidden civilizations. Yet they are also the subjects of romance, beauty, and hope—beacons of shelter and protection. The prehistoric Lascaux caves house sacred art and Plato's famous allegory projected ignorance and enlightenment onto their walls. Hughes' digital gateways shift across these fissures and their wide spectrum of fear and possibility. The artists' inaccessible flickering targets open and close, both an entrance and an exit, a wound and a window. As they render and fade, we are confronted with disorientation and a futile desire to latch onto something amid uncertainty.