Chair for a Woman
Anne Low offers a unique take on furnishings, function and imagined lives.
Anne Low, “Bedchamber of a paper stainer (bedsteps),” 2018 (courtesy the artist, photo by Toni Hafkenscheid)
Initially trained as a weaver, Montreal artist Anne Low draws on her attention to detail in Chair for a woman, on view until March 24 at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery.
The show features five sculptural pieces modelled on historical furnishings: a stool, a fire screen, a writing desk, a set of bed steps and a faux Egyptian chair from 1550 BC. The sculptures sit on a multi-level plinth and a large installation hangs on the wall to their rear. The exhibition takes its name from the real Egyptian chair in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“I want the works to be seductive,” Low says. “I want people to be drawn into closely looking at them and be surprised by the nature of how things are made.”
She approaches sculpture in the “slow, meticulous way” that weaving is made. “But I’m also interested in having these sculptures determined and fabricated in a really specific way.”
From a distance, the works look like replicas. But Low has customized them with little touches – like the handkerchief left on the bed steps – that unsettle them. “It opens it up to being more mysterious in terms of use or how it might have existed,” she says.
Anne Low, “Bedchamber of a paper stainer (wall),” 2018, installation view from “Chair for a woman” at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
Low asks us to imagine these household objects uncoupled from their utilitarian role and to think instead about the lives of the women who used them.
The installation Bedchamber of a paper stainer (wall), for instance, suggests the interior of a sumptuous manor house. The moulding is extravagant, the detailing superb. Three sheets of wallpaper hang casually over a hinged door, implying the room is incomplete, a work in progress.
Anne Low, “Grubby,” 2018 (courtesy the artist, photo by Toni Hafkenscheid)
Low also plays with our assumptions about decoration and purpose, embroidering a sunny face on Grubby, a fire screen that would normally be, well, grubby, and draining colour from the stripes on Dead blood, a hand-forged iron stool that, if historically accurate, would feature a multi-hued fabric covering.
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Anne Low, “Chair for a woman,” 2019, installation view at Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
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Anne Low, “Chair for a woman,” 2019, installation view at Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
Ancestress is perhaps the most intimate piece. Writing paper, two pencils, an eraser and three candle stubs are placed strategically atop a smaller-than-normal writing desk. The drawer is open, revealing a stack of papers carefully bound with handmade silk. Are they letters? To whom are they addressed?
It’s these human touches that take us beyond the world of furnishings as an architectural statement and into the imagined workings of a home. Low’s play with context and material creates a unique and charming tribute to the objects, their purposes and their imagined owners. ■
Chair for a woman is on view at the Contemporary Art Galley from Jan. 18 to March 24, 2019.
Contemporary Art Gallery
555 Nelson Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 6R5
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