Circle, Sphere, Horizon Line, Lyndl Hall’s solo-exhibition at the Burrard Art Foundation, is a continuation of her critical inquiry into the iconography of place making – from wanderlust to cartography. Her work has been described to me as quiet, understated, discrete or something that treads the line between docile and minimal. Although they aren’t meant as terms injurious to the dignity of the work, such characterizations undermine the robustness of her project, which grapples with the tumult that drives the practical discourses of way-finding. 
Lyndl Hall, Spheres I and II
The two-channel video Birds/Boat abuts footage of an albatross’s flight and a boat’s bow combatting Antarctic waves. As we watch the shape of the bird waver in a sky framed by the camera, it at times seems trapped. The animal is free, but remains a subject for observation, even while the scrutiny is so deployed so aimlessly. The epic journey that reaps the shaky and quaint footage of a bird makes for a satisfying irony.
A deeper consideration of how we are socially affected by spatial orientation and the pursuit of direction, and how these impulses are sublimated into rational discourse is given through the process of abstracting the signifiers of geography. Spheres I and II are a pair of white plaster balls nested in individual steel supports. Structured like standing globes, their surfaces are considered “blank terrains.” However, even though they impose a void, the inexplicable landscape isn’t erased. The distinction between land, sea and territory might be abolished, but the blankness tempts the intrepid to redraw lines.
Arrow is a nine-foot arrow sand-casted in bronze. It is positioned in the gallery to point north. This work began with Hall drawing a long and decisive line in the sand and then she poured molten metal into that mark. By articulating a literal “line in the sand,” one creates a boundary, and by pointing in another direction, this heavy object bluntly tells you where you could go.
Burrard Art Foundation: http://www.burrardarts.org/
Lyndl Hall: Circle, Sphere, Horizon Line continues until February 18.
Steffanie Ling's essays, criticism, and art writing have been published alongside exhibitions, in print, and online in Canada and the United States. She is the editor of Bartleby Review, an occasional pamphlet of criticism and writing in Vancouver, and a curator at CSA Space. She is Akimblog’s Vancouver correspondent and can be followed on Twitter and Instagram @steffbao.
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Lyndl Hall at the Burrard Art Foundation
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