Cindy Blažević, Zoe Kreye & Gwenessa Lam
Curated by Katherine Dennis

7 September–30 October 2013


Opening reception: Saturday, September 7th, 2–4 p.m.

The Campbell House Museum
160 Queen Street W., Toronto, ON M5H 3H3

Gallery admission is free

What makes a house a home? Built in 1822, the Campbell House is the oldest remaining building from the original town of York. Once a family home, this dwelling is more than an example of Georgian architecture; it is a site of heritage and a relic of personal and collective memory. Contemporary Canadian artists Cindy Blažević, Zoe Kreye and Gwenessa Lam capture how the physical structure of a space contributes to individual and shared identities. Exhibited in the second floor ballroom surrounding the fireplace – the hearth, the symbolic soul of the family – this exhibition animates a space frozen-in-time, thereby drawing our awareness to the historical performance of "home" within the Campbell House Museum. Together the artworks offer open-ended narratives about the transformation of space into place, house into home.

Cindy Blažević, Gaetano, Montreal, 2006

The photographic series Generational Living Rooms (2005–) by Cindy Blažević captures thirtysomething males in the home in which they were raised. These portraits tell a story of changing values visible in the divergance between subject and backdrop. The living-room setting stands in for an older generation, while the men represent, with their distinct personalities, quirks and personaes, a younger generation trying to define alternative ways of living in the world.

Gwenessa Lam, Double Interior (diptych), 2011.
Courtesy of the collection of Amir Bassiri
on behalf of Scotia Macleod

In stark contrast, Gwenessa Lam's Interiors (2010–11) are haunting, void of individuality, yet uncannily provoke an intimate connection. These hyperrealistic but subtly distorted paintings of an interior space depict doorways, floors and walls empty of any signifiers of a family home. The paintings encourage a quiet need to understand why this room remains empty. What stories would be told if walls could speak?

Zoe Kreye, Audio Blueprint,
Grifford House, 2004

Positioned between the void of Lam's paintings and the fullness of Blažević's photographs, Kreye's Audio Blueprint, Grifford House (2004) presents the shell of a family home constructed from adult recollections of childhood memories. The interview, which plays alongside the sculpture, provides the blueprint for this model home. Kreye's architectural structure frames the transformation where a physical space – a house – built with lived experiences and reconstructed through memory, becomes a home.

The placement of contemporary photography, painting and sculpture in the Campbell House Museum – a space of artifact and preserved history – reveals a discord and dialogue between changing concepts of home and family. Blažević, Kreye and Lam explore memories, representations and reality experienced: in the transition from house to home, in the shift from physical structure to community, and in changing ideas of selfhood and societal values.

We would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and the Sir William Campbell Foundation.

    

    

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For information on the exhibition please contact the curator, Katherine Dennis at kath [dot] dennis [at] gmail [dot] com or 416-827-9190