Another Ode to Outer Ends, 2010, Cement, water, ultra sound generator, slag glass, basin

Canell’s expanded and (quite literally) expanding conception of sculpture as ‘an fixed, durational phenomenon’ is most insistently reflected in her assiduous investigations of the sculptural possibilities and properties of such recalcitrant materials as sound, light, water, steam and electromagnetism. While some of her works incorporate an overt musical element many more of them are combined in configurations in which particular works hum or drone so that the exhibition space is infused by sound, though sometimes at a level that is barely audible. The sound reverberating through certain installations has on occasion been complemented by the inclusion of one or more of Canell’s ‘evaporation works’, which produce clouds of steam rising from buckets of water fitted with mist machines… That these mist machines operate on the basis of ultrasonic vibrations draws attention to the parallels and overlaps between the forms of movement proper to gas, sound, and water as well as other waveforms.