Two Rivers hosts dual exhibitions on our consumer lifestyles

Two artists. Two very different mediums. One subject: our need to buy and possess things and the consequences of that drive.

From now until October 9, the Canfor Galleries at Two Rivers will be home to two exhibitions examining the relationship between consumption and waste.

“My work is about ideas of excess and consumerism as it applies specifically to the idea of decorating your home or building new homes,” says Eileen Murray, whose enormous, opulent paintings are hanging in Canfor South. “Just a domestic take on consumption. Because of the size of the room and there’s a lot of color in there, just the display itself is excessive. So it just piles onto that idea of too much, too much, too much.”

Murray wants to prompt a physical response in viewers and get them to consider their own relationship to consumerism.

“I hope that they have fun interacting with the size of the imagery and you can really mentally feel that you could physically walk into the space.”

If Murray’s work is opulent, Ian Johnston’s sculptural installation The Chamber is huge. Thirty feet long, 15 feet wide and 12 feet high, it’s an enormous shroud that inflates in seven minutes and then gradually deflates.

“I like to think of it as a model of a coping mechanism,” he says. “I think the way we cope is by focusing on something and then backing away from it or holding it at bay and focusing on something else. Very much in a cyclical way, like breathing.”

The Chamber was born out of an artistic experiment Johnston conducted with a sponge. While the Chamber and its breathing are inspired by nature, its contents are not.

“What ended up inside was the other end of that continuum. It literally was objects that the salvation army and other thrift stores had no use for. Really things that were at the end. I kind of borrow them on their way to the dump.”

Johnston says one of the most common reactions to his piece is laughter.

“That, to me, is a really interesting response to it because, if you want to get people to look at waste as a subject, typically you’re not going to get much buy in if you wave a stick at them. So, switching the subject, catching them off guard and allowing them to be a little bit amused by what they’re seeing.”

He says children are often captivated by The Chamber.

“I find typically children enjoy it more than adults and they’ll enjoy watching it more than once. They’ll go through the entire cycle. To me, it’s very gratifying.”