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Penelope Stewart is an artist, curator/writer and publisher whose multi-disciplinary practice encompasses expansive architectural installations/interventions, alternative photography, artist books, and works on paper. Re-current themes address notions of cultural memory, of time and space and a considered approach to the relationship between objects, architecture, gardens, landscape and the places between – places to intervene, inhabit and above all activate. Whether it has been historic sites such as Musée Barthète, a small museum in France, or a museum like the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY or the deconstruction/reconstruction of a 19 th century book of botany using cyanotype, her intentions are to create sensory spaces, haptic experiences, transforming our perceptions and possible readings of space, time and memory.

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Houselife

Houselife 2017

Heritage sites are complex. The intersections of multiple histories, complicated narratives, and potential futures, overlaid onto built heritage and artefacts creates a tantalising canvas for contemporary artists. There are so many stories to be told, and so many stories yet to be created. It takes an extraordinary storyteller to distill all of this into a cohesive experience, and there is no doubt that houselife, an exhibition by Penelope Stewart and Laura Vickerson is more experience than exhibition.

Aaron Nelson former Executive Director at Medalta Museum, Medicine Hat Alberta

 

houselife, refers to the agency and historic manufacture of the domestic objects at Medalta. Stewart and Vickerson began their collaboration with conversations that explored the convergence and overlap of their individual practice’s.  Re-current themes addressed notions of feminism, cultural memory, time, and space with an interest in the symbolic nature of objects, domestic and postindustrial architecture, and landscapes. They were interested in finding places to intervene, inhabit while activating the objects and the site. They agreed to create individual works that would over the life of the residency intersect, growing into the other and in essence be in open conversation. The exhibition took place inside one of the original vast beehive kilns located on the Medalta property.

Stewart was fascinated by the 1000’s of moulds and began to see them as sculptural artifacts. Daily she would walk and explore the larger site, the kilns, and especially the vast ancillary factories, such as the Hycroft warehouse. Here she discovered seas of moulds, piles of domestic objects, detritus and factory remains. Her most engaging discovery was the mould to make the moulds.  This began a practical inquiry and the creation of sequential mould making… a mould of a mould of mould and then casting these in beeswax. In addition, she collected and began stacking plaster moulds as both artefacts, architecture and plinths. These towers became sites to showcase multiple domestic cups and pitchers of varying sizes that she had cast in beeswax. Ultimately these were arranged and in conversation with Laura Vickerson’s hovering quilt like sculptures.

Vickerson’s research uncovered interesting histories of the beehive kilns and how their use was expanded to be warming stations for those that rode the rails during the depression. This inspired Vickerson and she began to create fabric sculptures that reflected oversized quilt pieces. Using found fabrics she carefully cut and sewed hexagonal remnants and sometimes overlayed them with lace or highlighted embroider elements. Further she gathered flowers from her garden and carefully pressed these into the hexagons while covering each piece in beeswax. Eventually these hexagonal clusters were hung from the ceiling and created the illusion of a floating blanket.

Over the residency and the lead up to the exhibition the artists became part of the extended community giving talks about their previous work and participating in numerous social events.