Myfanwy MacLeod | Do You Hear What I Hear?

×

Expand

Myfanwy MacLeod, “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

installation. Image courtesy of Justin Muir.

Like many of us, Vancouver artist Myfanwy MacLeod—infamous for her public artwork in Olympic village of gigantic birds that reference Hitchcock—doesn’t exactly embrace the holiday season and its conventions.

For over a decade, MacLeod has used her collection of postcards that caricature drinking and drunkenness to develop of a series of sculptures and collages—the most recent iteration is currently reflected in the window displays at 1265 Howe Street.

In this exhibition, presented by Malaspina Printmakers, the profile of a woman’s face is mirrored, tiled into a repeating pattern, silkscreened onto bespoke fabric, upholstered onto a chair, printed on craft paper, and used to wrap 'Christmas' gifts.

The installation of the objects presents a lonely narrative that is festive, yet bleak: unopened gifts sit beneath an artificial black undecorated Christmas tree; the empty chair is angled downstage under warm spotlights; and, the entire scene is backlit by an ambient grinch-like green glow.

“By personifying the objects in this exhibition, MacLeod transforms the mise-en-scène into a frozen play about a woman endlessly lamenting to herself, all the while surrounded by gifts to and from herself”, says curator Justin Muir. “The dark humour of this lonely scene is amplified by the title's reference to the song Do You Hear What I Hear?, which was written during the height of the Cold War—the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Exhibition on display 24/7 in the windows at 1265 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada