Highlights from my time as an installer and designer in cultural spaces, galleries, and museums throughout my career. Personal main take-aways from this part of my career were composition, how people experience a physical space, and collaborating with artists and art industry professionals.
Small people are capable of very big things!
Eclipse, Mary Ma, 2016. Shadowed Land Exhibition, 2016
I had a lot of fun as this piece was entirely reliant on projector tech, shadows, and reflections—installations I’d learned up until then were mainly of physical perimeters. I got called in every few weeks as the light would get shifted over time by visitors or other factors. More on Mary Ma at Cafka.
Pattern Migrations, Sanaz Mazinani, Summer 2017
This space was almost a solo install—save the people-power needed to carry and lift the larger elements. Of note, the wallpaper-wall was extremely hard to align and, I was working with very large paper, lots of room to go wrong. To install the congregation of porcelain doves I sat at floor level very cautiously as they circled me for a nearly a week (very intimidating!). My main concern was to make sure they could not be budged by visitors. More on the artist at sanazmazinani.com.
Fibre’d Up *F’d Up!”, 2013
In this beast of an install curated by Stuart Keeler, I was mainly tasked with the incense wall for What It Is I Came For I Turn and Turn, Part VI by Kai Chen featuring thousands of drilled holes, and Franco Arcieri’s Astral Noise performance. Read more about the turn out at Toronto.com.
Border crossings: Traveling along the in between
This install had a lot of collaboration as it was developed in conjunction with/to feature the work of the Mississauga community residents. This was also the first time I worked with an outside vendor to bring in water. The large wall in the frontal gallery with colour-blocking chunks was solo-painted with a 5’2 me on very tall ladders. It was no easy feat!
Read about the project at AGM.
Sweetness of the Work, Noelle Hamlyn, VAM36, Spring 2013.
One of the very first installs I participated in where the challenge was in that the articles used were delicate and antiquated materials such as salt and rusted metal. More at www.noellehamlyn.com.
Salt, rust, wood (Spinning Jenny, Tools of the Trade), embroidered tea bags (Colonial Tea Jacket)
011+91 011+92 on locational Identity, Sumaira Tazeen, 2013
First time working with large amounts of dirt and gold leaf, very volatile materials. Visual spacing was important in this show where I learned how to pace and space focal points to maintain visual interest, a skill I use now as a creative and designer in my practice every day. More at sumairatazeen.com.