Imagined Objects

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Tamara Rusnak, “Seeker,” 2019 - ongoing

clay, wire, wood and oil paint, 24″ x 12″ x 16″ (photo by Don Hall)

I spent a rainy, summer afternoon with Imagined Objects, a two-person exhibition on view until Sept. 26 at the Art Gallery of Regina. Despite the show’s title, the words that continued to come to mind as I walked through the space were “imagined artifacts.” I found it difficult to ignore the ethnographic sensibility of much of the imagery, which detracts from the intended effect of creating an imaginary space suspended from the “real” world.

This comes through on entering the space and moving clockwise, as I did, and happening first upon Tamara Rusnak’s Anti-reflector: three papier-mâché sculptures affixed to the wall, quite expertly appearing as rocks. Following this work, displayed in a manner one might see in a natural history museum, is Rusnak’s Collection Drawings, a series of seven framed ink drawings on paper.

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Tamara Rusnak, “Anti-reflector,” 2010

papier maché, each 12″ x 8″ x 3″ (photo by Don Hall)

The drawings are playful and evoke tactility, representing objects that are imagined tools. But I found myself wanting Rusnak, a Saskatchewan artist who recently moved to Saanich, B.C., to take this imaginative aspect even further, as many images still look too familiar to suspend disbelief – we find a nest, a stick, a spear, for example.

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Tamara Rusnak, “Collection Drawings,” 2015-18

ink on paper, each 44″ x 30″ (photo by Don Hall)

This continues with Rusnak’s three-dimensional sculptures, like Reacher, which resembles quite directly the large tusks of some extinct mammal. I wonder how the works might exist more in an imaginative register if specific “functions” of the tools were denoted, including descriptions of what the tool can do, as a way of further defamiliarizing the given object (say, a spear-like object) from what it signifies in the “real” world.

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Jessica Morgun, “Think of a lost thing,” no date

stoneware sculptures and text, size variable (photo by Don Hall)

Saskatoon artist Jessica Morgun’s Think of a lost thing is an installation of 12 stoneware sculptures that each rest on a piece of coloured leather (a ruddy burgundy, a deep purple and a sandy brown). This work brings us closer to the imaginative realm, being less tied to an anthropological visual sensibility and therefore more able to float in a speculative space.

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Jessica Morgun, “Think of a lost thing” (detail), no date

stoneware sculpture, 12″ x 12″ x 8″ (photo by Don Hall)

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Jessica Morgun, “Think of a lost thing,” no date

stoneware sculptures and text, size variable (photo by Don Hall)

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The context that gave rise to Morgun’s work is intriguing: she asked participants to describe a lost thing, but using only descriptors that refer to the object’s relation to their own bodies. Working from this haptic and proprioceptive place, she then created the works on display. The resulting pieces are intricate and bodily, with effective material choices.

The works in this show are materially evocative and the conceptual attempt behind the exhibition is bold. But it resides too much in the “actual world” of culture and history to properly call itself “imaginary.” I wonder what will come next for these two artists, and hope they continue to dive into the recesses of their imaginations as they create images across media and form. ■  

Imagined Objects at the Art Gallery of Regina from Aug. 6 to Sept. 26, 2021.

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