Unpacked and Reheated
Program, P.1950
- Identifier
- P.1950
- Type
- Group exhibitions
- Category
- Visual Arts
- Date
- March 2 – April 7, 2007
- Description
- Unpacked and Reheated, a two-person installation featuring work by Brendan Fernandes and Steven Rayner, questions the uneasy alliance of tourism, place, culture and the environment. Unpacked and Reheated opens at 8pm on Friday evening, March 2 at Open Space, 510 Fort Street. Artists talks will follow the next day, Saturday March 3 at noon. Both artists take a fresh look at ‘culture’s nature.’ Brendan Fernandes work was initially inspired by the artificial gardens he encountered in his hometown of London ON, which recreated yard-scaled African savannah. As an Indian born in Kenya and raised in Canada, the gardens seemed an apt, but unexpected, expression of colonial or post-colonial subject positions. Fernandes’ installation includes souvenir objects within a setting that emphasizes the hyper-commercialized values of tourism, itself a particular type of migratory behaviour. Steven Rayner tinkers with the heroic presence of trophy mammals. His scenarios are a bionic equivalent to the popular genre of wildlife art, simultaneously satisfying and irritating.