DRIL is a Vancouver based artist collective comprised of Dylan McHugh, Rachel White, Ian Prentice and Leisha O'Donohue. All members received their BFA from NSCAD University in 2006-07, and founded the collective in 2009. With diverse backgrounds in painting, sculpture, ceramics and printmaking, their collaborative practice has expanded to include installation-based artworks and social events that combine a broad range of media, such as photography, video, sculpture and performance.
Placing emphasis on sensorial experience, their projects take the form of immersive, cinematic environments, employing theatrics, mediated imagery and artifice as tools to inform, transform, and reframe our perceptions of the everyday. Through these experiences, DRIL is inerested in questioning the role of the viewer in the formation of meaning, as well as notions of authenticity and a collective consciousness.
Their installations are frequently site-responsive, engaging with the architecture, geography and history of spaces. For each new project, their approach to research based methodology considers an archaeological process, sifting from the present down, through subjective layers of culture, myth and history. This lends itself to tactile, hands-on studio-based experimentation, where the concept or subject of a project may inform new explorations into materials, mediums and processes.
DRIL's collaborative practice comes together as a culmination of shared labor and an intertwining of ideas, knowledge and disciplines. Project development hinges on the unanimous agreement of all members of the group. In this sense, the nature of the collective is akin to a small community working in solidarity.
Past exhibitions include, Print Ready VII: Stockholm Edition – Stockholm, Sweden, 2016, Measure of Light – Dynamo Arts Association – Vancouver, 2015, THRU THE TRAPDOOR – On Main Gallery – Vancouver, 2014, Western – Kamloops Art Gallery – Kamloops, BC, 2013.
