Exhibition: Emily McIlroy, All is a Circle Within Me

“All is a circle within me./I have gone into the world and out again./I have gone to the edge of the sky./Now all is at peace within me./Now all has a place to come home.” Nancy Wood
The works in this exhibition propound the infinite and eternal interconnectedness of existence through two radically different modes of representation one figurative and organic, the other abstract and geometric. Both modalities take the circle as their central theme, a universal symbol used across a wealth of cultures and spiritual traditions to embody totality, wholeness, unity, and timelessness. In creating these pieces, McIlroy embraces a worldview in which time is non-linear and cyclical in nature, and in which all beings and phenomena are profoundly and elegantly bound together in relationship. Referencing Alaska Native spiritual beliefs, Celtic interlace designs, and Tibetan funerary practices, All is a Circle Within Me immerses the viewer in various allusions to the infinite. It offers representations of space and time that point to the true nature of our cosmos as eternal, intimately interwoven, and ordered by divine immanence. It is the artist’s hope that these works can serve as tools for absorption, instilling in beholders a numinous sense of both deep peace and tremendous awe. “I aspire to take audiences ‘into the world and out again,’ to ‘the edge of the sky,’ and full circle back ‘home’.”