After seeing off a friend, Stephanie McNair walks across the
freshly mopped, grey wooden floor to greet a new guest.
The walls, including columns and moldings, have been dusted and
painted a pristine white. High-ceilinged, the large, open space has no
walls; no rooms, only the component parts of a small or studio
apartment-based life “separated by light,” according to the artist.
Spotlights cut an illuminated circle around a provisional kitchen
and a table and chairs. McNair’s calico cat, Nishka, lazes on one of
the seats. A cage stands open and empty: Her dog Billie roams the
room.
A bed stands in the middle of the space. Her clothes are divided
between a steel-tube rack outside the tall doors and four outfits
hanging on pegs against inlays in the gallery walls. Portable stereo, a
short row of books, a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste on a plinth:
all are lit, iconic.
With no washroom, McNair uses one downstairs. OK, but it’s still a
nice place.
Her place, for now, is the Ballroom Gallery at the Khyber
Institute of Contemporary Art, which the non-profit, artist-run centre
rents from HRM and operates in the battered, embattled building on
Barrington.
McNair, a veteran of performance, burlesque and drag-king art in
Halifax, has moved into the gallery, out of necessity. She needed a
temporary address between an apartment she had to leave and one she
can’t move into until the first of March.
Called Set for Life, this exhibition, curated by Emily Jones,
plays on the name of the lottery game.
“It still feels very homey, I think,” McNair says, scanning the
room.
When an unexpected hole developed in the Khyber’s exhibition
schedule earlier this year, Jones, an independent curator, had just
heard from McNair about the latter’s need for a transitional place.
This need led to McNair revisiting an idea to inhabit a gallery she had
when working at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery. (She’s worked in
gallery installation. Her toolbelt hangs here.)
“We’re both kind of needing something,” she says of herself and the
Khyber. “We’re both able to fulfill each other’s needs.”
McNair may workshop a performance in the Ballroom Gallery, but not
as a programmed event during her stay. Instead, she might practice for
an upcoming event, such as Live Art Productions’ fundraiser, the Salt
Truck Follies, as she would in her own apartment. Drop by during
regular gallery hours and you just might catch her at work. McNair may
stop to talk, she may keep going with the piece, or whatever other
routine thing she’s doing. So far she’s gone with her gut, following an
improvisational impulse.
Not a cellphone owner, the artist is reachable through the gallery’s
number. She suggests friends and strangers call before popping in to
visit. Some people are comfortable with the pop-in; others aren’t. It
depends on who’s popping in. McNair has found an undefined spot on the
pop-in spectrum. “Yesterday, there was a few people in. I met them
through the gallery in the last few days. So they came in to say hello
and I…wasn’t necessarily expecting them,” she says,
uncomfortably.
Beforehand, McNair admits she rarely came downtown. She lived and
worked in the north end. “I haven’t even ventured out much here,” she
says of this stretch of barren, boarded-up Barrington, except to walk
the dog. She ends up going back up the sloping streets, heading into
the north end.
“The Khyber has a history of operating outside typical gallery
hours. A lot of that kind of activity has moved to the north end where
many landlords are more lenient, or where there aren’t so many
regulations being enforced and what-not, but I like that the Khyber is
so stubborn about its location downtown,” explains curator Jones by
email, which she requested to use during a busy day of “moving
furniture.”
She says, “I don’t think that they do,” when asked if HRM staff were
notified about the nature of the exhibition. “It’s bizarre that the
city and laws make it difficult for the artists and the Khyber to
operate downtown, doing fairly innocent and harmless things, but then
it’s so easy for hundreds of young adults to get blindingly drunk in
downtown.”
Set for Life, until Friday, February 27
at the Khyber ICA, 1558 Barrington, 422-9668, free.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.
What she is doing is likely highly illegal. That space is not designated for residential use and she is likely in violation of numerous bylaws and regulations. I believe a call to HRM Bylaw Enforcement is in order here.
As usual Keith, you miss the point entirely, and are just being pissy about something that doesn’t affect your life in anyway, so quit with empty, sad threats. She was not squatting–this is an art exhibition that lasted for a short period of time (and is over now)–and it brought a lot of people and life to a HRM-owned building that the city has left abandoned for a long period of time. Kudos to Stephanie and to the Khyber for inhabiting a space on a street that also feels like it’s crawling towards the grave.
It’s performance art Keith, and similar projects have been done in galleries here and in other countries. And considering Barrington has multiple buildings with both residential and commercial space, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Khyber building has both classifications.
I think “Keith” is a character invented by the web editor to trigger discussions by making offensive and belligerent comments that drag responses out of the sensible but phlegmatic majority that lurk on the website.
Hey – Keith is his own man. I couldn’t invent such a gentleman. But I like your comment about the ‘sensible and phlegmatic majority.’ I wish I heard more from them, where ever they are.