Cabin Fever

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MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, “Cliff House, Tomlee Head, N.S.," 2010 (photo by Greg Richardson, courtesy MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects)

The Vancouver Art Gallery asks what a quintessential icon, the cabin, means to Canadians – and the world – in its latest exhibition, Cabin Fever. Quite a lot, it turns out. With both reverence and whimsy, the show, on view until Sept. 30, serves up a smorgasbord of historical photographs and architectural models, as well as videos and installations.

It opens by looking at the origins of the cabin as a simple structure built from natural materials. Two dozen haunting New Deal photographs of Depression-era American sharecroppers and their weather-beaten shanties drive the point home. The cabin’s primary function is to provide shelter from the elements. Ornamentation comes later.

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Dorothea Lange, “Home of rural rehabilitation client, Tulare County, California,” undated (Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph; Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Shelter is but one of the three themes pursued in the show. Utopia and porn, yes, porn, are the other jumping-off points.

By the mid-1800s, cabins were evolving from utilitarian structures to refuges, a mindset represented by a scale model of Henry David Thoreau’s one-room Walden Cabin.

By the 1950s, they had become vacation properties. This utopian era is marked by experimentation leading to A-frames and modular housing. Ken Isaac’s full-sized Experimental Living Structure looks like a lunar lander, but in fact was introduced in 1973 and expresses a reverence for nature.

Frank Lloyd Wright is also represented with a series of models, photographs and videos that illustrate his desire to incorporate structures into their surroundings. “No house should be on the hill,” he said in 1943. “It should be of the hill.”

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Cabin in Bracebridge, Ont., 2016 (photo by Sam Barkwell)

A large geodesic dome introduces us to Buckminster Fuller and the issue of alternative housing, while Vancouver artist Liz Magor’s full-sized installation, Messenger, presents the cabin as a survivalist’s sanctuary. Peering through the front door reveals a single bed, assorted crockery, medieval armour and two grenades.

Another full-sized installation, Cabin Horror Remix, by Vancouver’s Justina Bohach, playfully stirs up fears about being alone in the deep, dark woods. A cheesy horror movie with a bone-chilling soundtrack plays on a TV in the faux living room.

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Richard Johnson, “Ice Hut #556, Cochrane, Ghost Lake, Alberta, Canada,” 2011 (courtesy of the artist)

And the Porn section? It deals with our cultural obsession with cabin mythology and all things outdoorsy. This fetish has been used to sell everything from clothing (Roots and L.L. Bean) to maple syrup and various playthings. A wooden toy from 1916, Lincoln Logs, hangs in a showcase alongside some of today’s plastic derivatives, making the point that the cabin aesthetic is as pervasive as ever.

So too is Wright’s dictum. The exhibition concludes by looking at the future of cabin design with a series of architectural models that reinforce the union of structure and environment. The most striking is a plan from Vancouver’s Patkau Architects to build cabins into a Pennsylvania hillside as accommodation for students and visitors to nearby Fallingwater, a house Wright designed in 1935 that’s now a National Historic Monument. ■

Cabin Fever is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery from June 9 to Sept. 30, 2018.