TRACES - alleyways & spandrels: An Exhibition

I have an exhibition of some work from my project TRACES - alleyways & spandrels up at the McMullen Art Gallery in Edmonton until January 28th.

TRACES alleyways & spandrels

Edmonton's 1100 km of urban and suburban alleyways are like the backbone of the city's identity. Unnoticed and unregarded routes and pathways through the city, much of the time un-peopled yet full of the evidence of people.

Back yards often seem less regarded than front gardens, more off-guard and by the time the alley is reached, it is dustbins and recycling boxes, left over bricks and spare siding - every now and then punctuated by a garden of beauty and pride, unrestrained nature or some peculiar product of whimsy.

The alleyways are the pathways through the city's identity. Still public, yet intimate. Domain of dog walkers, jogging soccer moms, garbage collectors, handymen repairing fences, fierce old ladies on solitary walks, afternoon gardeners and schoolboys dreaming and imagining adventures. Yet all encountered only infrequently - more often it is the traces, the evidence of these lives that is encountered.

"The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand,
written in the corners of the street, the gratings of the windows,
the bannisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning-rods, the poles of the flags.
Every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls"

Italo Calvino, Cities & Memory

The McMullen Art Gallery is located at the University of Alberta Hospital
(TRACES is in the After-Hours Gallery which is the exhibition space
which runs along the wall of the main corridor)

After-Hours Gallery (McMullen Art Gallery),
University of Alberta Hospital (next to the east entrance),
8440 – 112
Street,
Edmonton, AB