....from the twenty-two states of matter: Jo Percival

About the Exhibition

Exploring the complexities of materiality through the entangled fields of science, philosophy and art, I see drawing as a way of putting thoughts down on paper, tracing sensations of the world’s immensity and intimacy.

My work is rooted in the landscape tradition, drawing not only with traditional landscape colours in a variety of media but also with elemental materials : graphite, chalk, water, and earth. At the same time, I’m interested in expanding the idea of landscape beyond representation — toward a more speculative and dynamic notion of nature and matter. A central aspect of my practice is an interest in drawing’s diagrammatic potential—its capacity to exist halfway between concept and image, gesture and system. Working across scales — from the molecular to the cosmic— allows me to question fixed boundaries between body, world and matter.

Traditionally, matter was categorized into three classical states—solid, liquid, and gas—but contemporary physics complicates this view. Some now propose over twenty states of matter, ranging from plasmas to Bose-Einstein condensates to strange quark matter. These aren’t just scientific curiosities; they suggest a world far more unstable, entangled, and fluid than fixed categories allow. Furthermore, matter is no longer seen as inherently “substantial,” but as emergent from fields, probabilities, and patterns of energy.

In my drawings, I try to evoke this constant flux—the coming-together and falling-apart that shapes our perception of material reality. 

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The philosopher-ecologist, Tim Morton, talks about how strange it is that we’re losing solid ground under our feet at the exact same moment that we’re figuring out just how dependent upon that ground we are. Ultimately, I view my work as a kind of ode to the disordered beauty of the world we’re in and of. In a time of ecological uncertainty and conceptual fragmentation, I turn to drawing as a means of attunement—an intimate, open-ended way of being with the complexity, vulnerability, and interrelation of all things.

About the Artist

Jo Percival holds an Honours B.A. in Visual Arts from Western University and has previously participated in both group and solo exhibitions in Ottawa and London. As an arts educator, she developed and led a long-running workshop program in London-area schools, working with thousands of children over many years. This experience deeply informed her understanding of art as a relational and transformative practice. Jo has since returned to a full-time, drawing-based studio practice, creating large-scale works using elemental earth materials and mixed media.