Unknown Distance | Emma Burry

The horizon is a visual example of a distance that is physically unreachable. I define the horizon is an in-between space that we can perceive, but never physically reach. I believe that this is where longing resides. Longing for people, places, things, or communities that are somehow lost or unreachable. That is where my practice lives, within the distance between physical and metaphorical, interpersonal and introspective. Through labour and craft I explore longing for people, places, and communities that are out of reach.

Unknown Distance was a project created during the summer of 2019. Between my two years at Emily Carr University I was thinking a lot about distance and time and their relationship with longing.
Through the use of my body I wanted to explore the repetitive nature of longing; how your mind drifts between yourself (reality) and the longed for (memory). I decided to see if the metaphorical weight of that pacing could be seen through the layering of a physical action (in this case walking) across shipping skids.
The wood creaked, cracked, snapped and bowed under my feet. The paint and wood recording all the passes as I walked back and forth. The continued tension and accumulation of “memory” becoming too much for it to handle. Unknown Distance refers to both the unknown distances the skids traversed before I found them and also the distances I’ve been exploring both metaphorically and physically through my own experiences of longing.

Emma Burry is an interdisciplinary artist of settler and indigenous descent from the island of Newfoundland, Canada. She has spent much of her life just steps from the ocean which greatly influences her art practice. Emma has graduated from the Bachelor of Fine Arts Program at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University and is now a recent graduate of the Master of Fine Arts degree at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Emma Burry was the 2018 provincial winner of the BMO 1st Art! Award for Newfoundland. Emma has a diverse exhibition history, showing her work across Canada and also in the UK.

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