Angela Teng
New Works

Equinox Galley is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Vancouver-based painter Angela Teng. Since graduating from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Teng’s contemporary engagement with the historical medium of painting has led to a unique style centered around challenging the nature of paint and its supporting structures.

Angela Teng considers the histories of craft and textiles to connect the dualities of painting (painting as an object vs. painting as a process). The artist began this new body of work through a thrifting process where second-hand stores were scoured for incomplete or unwanted needlepoint patterns and designs. Historically devalued due to its association with “women’s work,” needlepoint is one of the oldest-known forms of canvas work where coloured yarn or embroidery thread is stitched through a pre-planned design on a stiff, open weave canvas. For Teng, the open texture provides the ideal opening to create her own works based on the existing designs but using the glistening and oozing material of oil paint rather than a continuous length of thread. The creators of the needlepoint patterns remain anonymous, and by re-using them and adding to them, Teng brings contemporary validation to their work and connects herself to the unknown artists of the past. The intimate scale is also to be noted in these works. As these are based on a historically domestic craft, the small scale is a counter-point to the large canvases of the 20^thcentury abstract expressionists.  Through a thoughtful approach that challenges ideas around traditionally feminized artistic labour, Teng's paintings are enlivened by a visual imagination that highlights the process of production while engaging in contested conversations about the distinctions between craft and fine art, textile and painting, labour and leisure.

Angela Teng: New Works opens on September 10th, 2022 at Equinox Gallery on Commercial Street in Vancouver.