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Vernissage: Tuesday, November 1. 6:00 – 8:00 pm, room LB-340.
Exhibition duration: October 15- November 16
broken cherished objects = teenage angst = sinister banality
After Party presents three installations that stem from artist book projects by Kerri Flannigan, Sarah Nesbitt and Jenny Lin. Set within wooden display cases viewed from above, each installation forms a microcosmic examination of fragments, scrutinized and reassembled into narratives that are personal, collective and cumulatively revealing.
Flannigan’s Coming of Age Stories is a collection of individual anecdotes of adolescent sexual and gender-identity-forming epiphanies. With humour and candour, these charged stories capture the shared experiences of angst-ridden bashfulness but also satisfaction and empowerment.
Nesbitt’s Broken Things considers the narratives and cherished associations embedded in otherwise meaningless physical objects. The act of recording and preserving fragments in Broken Things marks a transition where personal possessions move from functional/mundane to treasure/trophy. The bookwork processes this transition through personal mementos written to/about the dead. The ‘postcards’ eulogize the remains, personifying their deeper and perhaps bizarre relationship to their owners.
Lin’s Back Yard Grass rakes through the greenery of a suburban domicile exposing a gathering’s day-after left-behinds in whodunit fashion. In sequential book format, this set of pop-up images triggers an increasing sense of foreboding and absurdity with each turn of the page.
The three installations skitter between climax and anti-climax while also suggesting that the stories are to be continued. A new party begins amidst the debris of the tail end of another.
