Bev Pike: Grottesque

Known for her monumentally scaled paintings, Pike takes it way underground as this exhibit sees 18-feet-tall gouache-on-paper renderings of caves and subterranean grottos engulf Saint Mary's gallery with dark palettes and baroque detailing. "Evocative titles like Cavernous Sun Parlour, Buried Dancing Pavilion and Subterranean Day Spa suggest that these spaces comprise the leisure sites of a new underground civilization. They invite the viewer to psychically and performatively inhabit them while imagining the circumstances that may have necessitated a move underground," the gallery adds.