The sum of the parts brings together a constellation of works by Stephen Andrews that examine how systems of war, resource extraction, and global capital are permitted through complacency and constructed through incremental, often hidden acts. At the centre of the exhibition is The Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s recent acquisition of Cartoon (2007), a landmark work comprised of 125 drawings on mylar that together form the stills of a single-channel video animation. Suspended between object and image, stillness and motion, the work foregrounds the mechanics of its own making. Meticulously translating found footage frame by frame through a labour-intensive drawing process, Andrews mimics the dot matrix of four-colour reproduction, softening scenes of violence into a disquieting pastel register.
This body of work emerges from Andrews’ sustained engagement with media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and extends this inquiry into the infrastructures that sustain violence—global oil production, militarized economies, and consumer complicity embedded in daily life. Attentive to the ways images circulate and accrue meaning, the work examines how these representations mediate our understanding of global events. Across the exhibition, Andrews proposes that no image, gesture, or action exists in isolation. Each is part of a broader network of cause and consequence. In bringing these works together, The sum of the parts considers how these systems are assembled and how they might, through sustained attention, be understood differently.
Stephen Andrews was born in 1956 in Sarnia, Ontario Canada. Over the last forty-five years he has exhibited his work in Canada, the U.S., Brazil, the UK, France, Italy and Japan. He is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and other public institutions as well as many private collections. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2019 His work deals with memory, identity, technology and their representations in various media including drawing, animation and painting.
