The Gaze of History

description

The Gaze of History exhibition presented a series of prints and drawings from the Burnaby Art Gallery's collection that considered the gaze and directed looking. The powdered graphite faces I drew directly on the walls of the gallery interacted and responded to these framed works and represented the real and imagined former residents of this building.

“Fairacres,” as it was first known, was built as a retirement estate by Vancouver realtor Henry Ceperley and his wife Grace in 1910. Prior to its conversion to the gallery in 1967, the mansion housed a succession of wealthy families, beginning with the Ceperleys (1910-1939), a community of Benedictine monks (1939-1954), a controversial religious cult (1954-1965) and a university fraternity (1965-1966).

Seen in dialogue with each other the works from the collection and my wall drawings provided an opportunity to consider the boundaries of history, subjectivity and representation.