The title itself, “You can only get there from here,” immediately poses a number of questions for the gallery visitor: Where is here, and where is there? Why does anyone want to get from here to there? Iles’ installation is a compelling interactive hybrid of figurative paintings, sculptures and video/projected images, juxtaposing the layers of her narrative in a visual essay aimed at getting to some of those questions. artes fine arts magazine

Stepping into the gallery, we immediately come face-to-face with the installation, A combination of nerve and wit. At its center, a looming painting of a large dark tunnel seems ready to swallow us. Atop it sits a landscape with a bridge and foliage, while in the top left corner the image of a bull intrudes on the scene, suggesting that there is nothing pastoral about this work. But we don’t spend too much time considering the natural retreat offered by the margins of this work, as our gaze keeps returning to the tunnel. It is both dark and forbidding—but somehow mesmerizing, as well. A sculpture of a boy crouches on his skateboard, hand dirtied by the oily effluence flowing from the pipe. He is staring into the darkness, in a suspended moment of indecision—perhaps deciding whether to enter or flee the scene. It’s not a question of seeing the ‘end of the tunnel’ at this point, as it seems so far away. The figure appears to be both literally and figuratively frozen in place—a frightening, metaphorical depiction of the pathway to adult life. The viewer is left to decide whether the young person’s ambiguous body language, at the moment of choice, either represents ambivalence, or mere passivity.

Another installation piece entitled, A momentary decision of monumental significance, carries equal wight for anyone just entering adult life. It consists of two large red panels; a smaller, blue one; a sculpture; a projector; and a video. In one panel we see a deer and behind it a bloody carcass, perhaps symbolizing its future fate. Opposite that, a second panel depicts a man posing for a formal portrait, in the style of a bourgeois family patriarch—connoting someone of importance. The hunter and the hunted stare at each other from their respective vantage points. A sculpture of a young girl faces the man. Her head is covered by a hoodie and she’s holding some brochures—maybe handouts against animal cruelty. In her other hand is a large flag, with a forest bridge projected on it.

Can the generation gap between these two figures—between past and future—be bridged, or it is just an illusion, like the projected image? Maybe the bridge is there so that the deer might escape its grisly fate.

A pack of lions fight in the corner of a large painting entitled, A combination of cunning, speed and astonishing grace. But, the primal fury they symbolize—their ‘cunning, speed and grace’— seems somehow out of place, contrasted with the aquamarine-lit forest scene and distant stillness of the futuristic fortress towering above them. Most likely the small slice of land, with its earth-toned colors, may be the only remaining trace of a domain once controlled by these carnivores; as even now they seem so alienated in it. This composition includes two sculptures of young people—one with the face of a lion on the back of its head, and the other, a wolf. Iles mentioned that she often uses animals as metaphors to show the characteristics of a group or to signify what might become of those children as adults. Will these two become fighters for the environment or will they just tear each other apart in social conflicts?

Sculptures of fragile young figures fill the room, and they often serve as the protagonists in Iles’ paintings, as well. She is looking at the social disruption that contemporary teenagers confront, their body language serving as clues to their possible responses in a range of unsettling situations. Many wear hoodies to conceal their fragile identities. Some turn their back to the viewer, not yet ready to face the challenges that the adult world will present. As Iles says in her artist statement, “The world of youth on the cusp of adolescence is a closed and inaccessible environment of mysterious rituals, customs and codes of behaviour that are unintelligible to outsiders. Sculptural elements have been added which work in tandem with, and react to the paintings, creating a physical void between the subjects and the object of their desire and repulsion. The figures stand tentatively on the cusp of awareness of their potential and the abyss of the adult prerogative.”

This exhibition is not for the frail of heart. As painter, her work is in the spirit of Peter Doig, or Daniel Richter, with her unique combinations of figures and paintings providing a lot of physical and emotional space for the viewer to decipher her layered meanings. It is a brave show with a strong message about environmental issues, as well as the challenges that every generation faces as they emerge to define the world differently than the previous one. Taken at her word, Iles projects an optimistic note in the face of numerous environmental challenges. For the artist’s youthful subjects, expectations seem to be running high. The exhibition, “You can only get there from here” poses a hopeful message, where traces of a new morality, founded on notions of a fresh moral code that respects and supports all living things. The exhibition poses the uneasy dilemma, challenging every new generation—that is, how to respond to an oft-repeated and cynical message from the adult world: That’s not how we do things here.

By Emese Krunák-Hajagos, Contributing Writer