Burrow: Our Shelter Fetish
Adriana Kuiper Snack Bar Shelter 2007 Courtesy of Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery
The human impulse to seek safety and create a sense of protected isolation is taken to the farthest reaches of rationality by the four Canadian artists in “Burrow,” a touring exhibition, curated by Shannon Anderson, now on view at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery in Halifax. Organized by Oakville Galleries and featuring photography, sculpture, drawing and installation, the works in the show are united by an ambivalent relationship to the notion of shelter that reveals an ironic flipside to our impossible search for absolute safety: when we lock ourselves in, we are always shutting someone else out, creating isolation and anxiety in our search for peaceful refuge.
Liz Magor’s photographs of abandoned woodland shelters initially recall a romantic vision of living at peace with nature, but are clearly uninhabitable, resembling hideouts for criminals on the run more than idyllic forest escapes. The practical impossibilities of “roughing it” in the woods are further underscored in one of her famous log sculptures (this one titled Burrow) where a nylon sleeping bag is awkwardly shoved into the hollow of a fallen tree, creating an impossibly small, almost claustrophobic sleeping area.
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Samuel Roy-Bois Ghetto 2006 Courtesy of the artist |
Claustrophobia is likewise called up in Samuel Roy-Bois’s interactive sculpture Ghetto. A tiny, unfinished room only big enough to hold a single bed invites viewers in with its tidy bedding, locking door and electrical outlets, but also intimidates by replacing an entire wall with a sheet of Plexiglas, allowing other gallery visitors a voyeuristic perspective on everything that takes place inside.
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Liz Magor Burrow 1999 Courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery |
Taking a different approach to safety in the public sphere, Janice Kerbel contributes a series of dense architectural drawings that map “safe” places to stand in public buildings without being seen or heard. Adriana Kuiper’s massive installation Snack Bar Shelter, on the other hand, is built from architectural instructions in a 1950s US manual on homemade bomb shelters. Complete with peanuts, martini glasses and pickled eggs, it’s meant to be the perfect place for both cocktail parties and nuclear fallout, recalling a decade in North America when this latest fascination (or is it obsession?) with shelter first began. (5865 Gorsebrook Ave, Halifax NS)
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