I am now responsible for the stewardship of the land and monumental junk hoarding of my father, who often called it his ‘life’s work’, though he also had a long and dignified career as a labour activist. Our big house gradually became uninhabitable, all the rooms filled to the ceiling, the outbuildings and the barn as well, which collapsed under the load 50 years ago. Growing up in this environment has shaped my aesthetic world view. I helped my dad bring this stuff here all through my childhood, filling the car and trailer every Friday night, with broken householdry put out on garbage day in Toronto, antique house parts and hardware stripped from abandoned farms, tying it all down with ropes and extension cords. Unloading. I built my own cabin from the salvage. Now the acres of treasure is many layers deep, tangled in composting wood and plastic, and overgrown with trees. Some items are personal: my dad’s desert boots, the leather still shaped by his crooked toes.
As I continue to sort, my appreciation for the value of things is shifting. What started as a garbage clean up is slowly revealing a complex narrative. It is an exploration into a cross section of a 50 year history of technology and domestic life. Richly layered with family memory and the relationship with my father, the transient nature of materials and how they decay and break down, impermanence and that which remains, loss. The massive number of things and the experience of considering each object and it’s story is very compelling: how it looks, what it means, why it’s there, it’s use, it’s value, where it goes, whether it’s beautiful or disgusting or poisonous or if I should keep it…….
This drawing, Prelude, 2024, conte on paper, 66” x 88” is the first piece produced in a body of work currently in process, The Trouble with Beauty.
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