Reece Terris: Houses Beautiful
Reece Terris Ought Apartment 2009 Detail / photo Rachel Topham
For his artwork Ought Apartment, Reece Terris constructed a 60-foot apartment tower containing six full-scale apartments stacked one on top of the other–all placed within the neoclassical rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery. With its impressive size and complex construction, Ought Apartment responds to our desire to constantly upgrade our domestic surroundings to what we think we need, and it allows us to think further about the impact consumerism has on our identity and the environment.
Each of Terris’ apartments has been designed to represent a different decade, beginning with the 1950s on the ground level and continuing to the 2000s on the top level. Visitors can enter and make themselves at home in two of the apartments—the one from the 1950s and the one from the 1980s. From there, they can see into the other levels through aluminum scaffolding and architectural gaps that function as vantage points. Interesting angles can be experienced from the stairs that envelop the rotunda and from the outer areas of the other art exhibitions on display—not to mention voyeuristic glimpses from the gallery escalators. The apartments are furnished with original items from each decade that the artist collects through his job as a residential contractor, objects that would have otherwise been thrown away during the renovation process.
The word ought originated as the past tense of to owe, and according to the dictionary we are to reserve ought for expressing moral obligation or duty. So the title of Terris’ piece suggests a possible twofold meaning: First, that objects proclaimed to be ideal by the design industry are what we are made to feel we ought to possess. Second, that it is, from a more moral reading of the word, necessary to develop sustainable practices in home renovation, as well as an economic structure that can accommodate environmental concerns.
Reece Terris Ought Apartment 2009 Detail / photo Rachel Topham
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