Chris Reid: Nothing Smells in Absolute Zero

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Chris Reid "Fourth and Louise with Icicles," 2019

mat board and mixed media sculpture. Photo: Rob Lovatt

On Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 5:00 PM, the AGSM will host a panel discussion with professionals who work directly with people of Brandon who experience homelessness and the consequences of tenuous housing. Artist and sober living supervisor Chris Reid will be joined by Clearing the Path supervisor and counsellor Heather Bolech, Ask Auntie founder Florence Halcrow, and Sandy Trudel, the Director of Economic Development for the city of Brandon.

The panel will be held virtually on the AGSM’s Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter channels. The audience will be able to direct questions to the panelists via the comment section.

On Thursday, April 8, 2021 at 7:00 PM, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba will host a reception occasioned by two exhibitions, i {heart} Brandon in the Community Gallery, and Nothing Smells in Absolute Zero in the Main Gallery.

In homelessness studies, “absolute zero” means that no person is without a secure and stable place to spend the night. Its pragmatic sibling, “functional zero” aspires that for every person who is sleeping precariously, there is a place standing empty where they could be secure. With the paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations exhibited in Nothing Smells in Absolute Zero, Chris Reid invites you to wonder with her as you wander through a dreamscape built from the very real places that serve as homes for the unhoused population of Brandon, Manitoba.

Wielding her unique brand of pop-surrealism, Reid implies the significance of these citizens by rendering fragile structures substantial. Shadows and hybrid figures stand watch as sentries or as ghosts. Devoid of human presence, representations of places are understood to be portraits in negative, if one believes that a person’s substance can be gleaned by what they carry with them when there is no safe place to leave anything behind.