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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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Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, Artist Room (2006)

 

Created and designed by Susan Collett, Penelope Stewart and Nicholas Stirling

The architecture of the Gladstone being restored to its former glory gave us the inspiration to create a room that would reflect its new elegance while playing with contemporary notions of displacement. We are interested in the push and pull of travel, the longing for adventure while longing to be at home. Ideas such as…I am here… I was here… You are here… Wish you were here…. began to percolate. Maps, old postcards, stamps, old luggage, mazes all became source material to create the functional and the mise en scéne. A further element added to the space is a soundscape. The guest has the option of listening to a CD “audio postcard” composition or tuning into the regular outside radio broadcasts.

Selected Essays – New Craft in Old Spaces

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