A mound of grotesque fabric forms a sculpture on the far right of Hainsworth’s exhibit.

Alexa Hainsworth is currently presenting her MFA show, Swell, at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery on campus.

The show is a combination of sculptures that she has created over the last two years of her master’s degree in art and art history.

Swell consists of textile sculptures in dramatic and biological forms with bold colour choices. Viewers are encouraged to  imagine themselves in a theatrical environment.

Some of Hainsworth’s large, dramatically-coloured sculptures look like orifices while others are crystallic and mimic the calcification of the body with their crystal patterns.

Swell “is a very different plain and contemplative space that is challenging and provocative,” Hainsworth said.

“I am looking at this kind of biomorphic creature-like form, things that are just a little bit more eerie or strange…. I want to transform the gallery into a body. You come in and you feel like the gallery is alive,” Hainsworth said.

The centrepiece of Swell divides the room into four separate windows.

The centrepiece of the show is a work that started as a series of triangles in the shape of bikini tops that multiplied in production. Made from dark fabric with metallic seams, the piece divides the room into four quarters and is shaped like a draped canopy in the centre of the gallery.

“It plays with shadow and allows someone to go right underneath it,” Hainsworth said. It “breaks up the gallery into vantage points or windows between the legs.”

On the left side of the exhibit sit two pieces that represent the calcification of the body and a project made from gold mylar influenced by sci-fi movies and origami. Both projects are highly geometric, contrasting with more natural pieces on the other side of the gallery.

One project on the other side of the room is made from flesh-toned fabric. A mound on one sculpture looks like tumours piling upon themselves.

According to Hainsworth, the piece jumps “between hopeful, sensual and grotesque. It sort of glows with this hopeful, living quality. It goes between stages of new growth and something that’s decaying.”

This exhibit is a departure from Hainsworth’s undergraduate work, which focused on painting. For Swell, she wanted to do something that the audience could not stand back from, something that would consume the viewer rather than allow the audience to consume the art.

Hainsworth is interested and inspired by how other sculptors like Kiki Smith and Thomas Hirschhorn, who creates cocoons in his work, are able to set up spaces that are a new experience for the viewer.

Most importantly, Hainsworth wanted to create something unexpected.

“I think I have achieved that in my work,” she said.

Swell will be at the Snelgrove until Nov. 2 with a reception that night as well as on Nov. 7. Both receptions are at 10 p.m.

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Photos: Linnea Bargen