Domestic Bliss

Martin Golland (Guelph ON), Karina Kalvitis (Victoria), Robert Randall (Victoria), Curated by Roy Green (Victoria)

Opening Friday, June 2, 8pm until July 22, 2006
Artists’ Talk: Saturday, June 3, Noon

Spurred by the retreat into the privacy of the domestic space, this exhibit deliberates ideas of the home: as status symbol, architecture, shelter/security exterior and interior decor, investment/commodity, and as a site of personal expression and identity. This exhibit is curated by Roy Green (artist, poet), and features recent work by Martin Golland (Guelph ON), Karina Kalvaitis (Victoria) and Robert Randall (Victoria).

Martin Golland's new series of circular shaped oil paintings are studies in the perception and the depiction of interior spaces. Golland's canvases are anything but sedate: his interiors are as dizzying as a clothes dryer tornado. Arches, doorways staircases, windows and rooms bend, morph and merge in a painterly balance between order and chaos.

Karina Kalvaitis creates sculptural tableaux, which accentuate "the fine line between homes and cages." Kalvaitis combines elements of one-of-a-kind
designer furniture, 1950s interior design motifs with brilliant color schemes, and exotic fabric accoutrements. Her sculpture is reminiscent of both the circus and the nursery, and is enlivened by a similar whimsicality.

Robert Randall's small "portraits" of suburban dream homes are appropriated from vintage British Columbian real estate advertisements. These intimately scaled oil paintings on recycled pieces of lumber explore the relationship between the natural landscape and the man-made alterations to it. In addition to small paintings, Randall will be paint one of his images directly on the walls of Open Space. His enigmatic images provoke questions about the apartments, homes and businesses we inhabit.