McMaster Museum of Art presents:

Ian Johnston’s The Chamber

August 28 – October 25 2014 in our Panabaker Gallery
Curators: Joanne Marion and Linda Jansma

ARTIST’S TALK

September 11, 12:30 – 1:20 pm

RECEPTION

September 11, 6 – 8 pm (Artist will be present)

DOCENT TALK

September 16 at 12:30 pm for Lifelong Learning Week

The Chamber is an installation by architect-turned-sculptor Ian Johnston, whose work raises questions about our relationship to material culture—or, more specifically, about our current culture’s voracious appetite for the consumption of material things. The Chamber — one part of a series of works titled, Reinventing Consumption — is an inflating and deflating piece which shrouds and reveals an enormous mass of household items diverted from waste stream in Medicine Hat. It provides a space to contemplate the environmental impact of mass production through the forces of breath, fire, and water.

Ian Johnston is based in Nelson, BC. He studied architecture at Algonquin College and Carleton University in Ottawa, and with the University of Toronto at Paris, France. From late 1990 to late 1994, Johnston was based at the Akademie of the Bauhaus Dessau and co-developed experimental and interdisciplinary studio programs working through architecture, design and urban planning. He returned to Canada in early 1995. He has exhibited his sculptural ceramic work internationally since the mid-nineties. His current work examines our relationship with the environment in installations that use ceramic and mixed media and appeal to multiple senses of the viewer.