Rebirth of Space
Astra Howard, Untitled (Photograph series), 1999-2000, photograph.
4-27 April, 2002
64 Sixty Four Steps Contemporary Art Gallery, 1164 Queen St. W., Toronto
Curated by Rashmi Varma
Opening reception: Thursday, 4 April, 2002. 7-10pm
Rebirth of Space explores the nature of physical space and transformations, through poetics, excavations, construction and reconstruction.
Avanitka Bawa creates a sculptural installation using common building materials and cardboard boxes that reflect urban Toronto, while formally engaging in a dialogue with the physical space it occupies. Moving back and forth between two and three dimensions, her work involves drawings on the wall that extend onto to the cardboard boxes. Despite the concrete nature of the materials the configuration of the boxes exist in an ephemeral context serving as extensions of her wall drawing echoing the planar structure of the room. Her installations reflect the regional, cultural and geographic influence of the time and space she is working in.
Astra Howard's presents a series of photographs from operationSCOPE. The body is physically and psychologically conditioned by the inherent nature of habitation. Construction sites exemplify the transience of space and the constant process of change and reinterpretation, through personal and collective histories, experiences and interactions. In the operationSCOPE action, one excavates to remember. The operationSCOPE investigation is part of her ongoing research of public spaces in Sydney, Australia - Designing Community: Vagrant Landscapes for Transitional bodies. The works challenge expected body /space relationships positioning themselves in unexpected vacant or transient landscapes.
Cyrus Irani's Chasing the Dream uses 'constructed photography' to examine and comment on the concept of the leisure cruise, a trend that pervades our vacation culture. Is it possible that the architecture of the cruise ship signals the accommodation of the future, the floating city? Faithfully reconstructing cruise cabin interior spaces with cardboard models, which are then photographed, he creates simplistic and efficient spaces. The new photographs removes all the obvious traces of its origin, and replaces it with an allusion to packaging, while remaining small and discrete to remind us of their original state.
