“The (n)Atrocity Exhibition – a house crash for the rest of us” was an artist residency and exhibition at Vancouver’s BAF (Burrard Arts Foundation) gallery.
A house is of a scale and materiality that is essential, relatable, familiar. In working with such scaled and sourced materials, there is already something for most viewers or participants to relate to. Providing an elemental way into my work, without explicit prescription, is important to me as I am more inclined to abstraction and less inclined to realism.
Space itself is ephemeral, intangible, defined by its containing surfaces. Albeit with good reasons – like cost, efficiencies, gravity – these defining surfaces being flat and straight and joining at 90 degree angles are never-the-less conventions. In this BAF work, like other works mentioned above, I am “playing with” space. In the placement of the work in the larger gallery space, the form that the work takes and the AR extensions, this work is intended to be spatially provocative.
Another thing about the notion of home is that this is the traditional site of the threshold between public and private space. The house facade – or face – separates interiority from exteriority. A prominent theme of this BAF work is the re-regarding of this liminal skin, which, in 2017, is no longer the explicit privacy threshold it once was.
Have a look at the street view of The (n)Atrocity Exhibition here