FUNCTIONALAlmost

MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

BRIAN DAVIS

CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

VESNA TRKULJA

B U R L I N G T O N A R T C E N T R EJUNE 25 TO SEPTEMBER 19 , 19 99

The works of these four regional

artists are sculptural assem-

blages; they are constructed

using compulsively

col lected, quirky,

found objects, fetish-like ele-

ments, opulent materials and

neglected cast-offs, conjured

into fantasy works

of Cornellian ilk.

These artists obsessively assemble, com-

pulsively construct, lovingly craft their

own unique visions of our most familiar

objects and cultural icons. Their particu-

lar treatments of these forms and their

unique choices of materials allow the

works to take on a certain ambiguity that

challenges us to look closer at what we

generally take for granted in the objects of our everyday existence.

The use of materials laden with meaning and metaphor is a device

used to explore and explain the layers of idea and memory

attached to complex feelings and emotions. The artists’ explo-

rations and juxtapositions of materials and ideas expand our

awareness of the importance of the everyday, of the dialogue

between the function or non-function of an object, what is useful

and what is not useful in our culture. This is a particularly relevant

dialogue in a centre such as the

Burlington Art Centre, which houses

such a diverse range of artistic activity

within its guilds and studios, where

artists are constantly creating objects

both functional and non-functional in

an attempt to tell their own personal

stories. This historic counterpoint, the

notion of craft versus fine art, function versus non-function, is a

lively issue here. Is there truly a division between the two, as has

been traditionally proclaimed? If so where is the divide? The work

of the artists in this exhibition suggests a false separation of the

two, the blurring of boundaries, the insignificance of the question,

the problems of a too dogmatic approach. The issue for them

is the telling of the story, and the materials arrive as they will to

perform the important function of communication.

CURATOR: DAWN WHITE BEATTY

1333 Lakeshore Rd., Burlington Ontario L7S 1A9Telephone: (905) 632-7796 • Fax: (905) 632-0278

� Email: Info@burlingtonar tcentre.on.ca • Website: www.burlingtonartcentre.on.ca

This publication, ‘Almost Functional’, accompanied the exhibition‘Almost Functional: Michael Allgoewer, Brian Davis, Christianne L’Esperance, Vesna Trkulja’

at the Burlington Art Centre, Burlington, Ontario June 25 to September 19, 1999Curator: Dawn White Beatty

Essay and Poems: Dawn White BeattyPublication Design: Wordsmith Design & Advertising, Hamilton

ISBN#0-919752-62-4

The Burlington Art Centre gratefully acknowledges the financial support of

our Membership, Corporate Members and Sponsors; the BAC Foundation; Arts Burlington Council;

the Volunteer Council; the City of Burlington; the Ontario Arts Council; the Provincial Ministry of Citizenship,

Culture and Recreation; The Canada Council of the Arts; and the Federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

COVER PHOTOS (left to right):

Michael Allgoewer • Detail of ‘Desire Develops an Edge’, 1999

Brian Davis • Detail of ‘Corrugated Chippendale’, 1998

Christianne L’Esperance • Detail of ‘Altar’, 1999

Vesna Trkulja • Detail of ‘destroy, degrade, demolish, devastate, disrupt, displace, dispossess, dismantle, diminish’, 1999

The objects that theseartists make are onthe verge… they beginat functional andwander into a placeof maybe or not quite,just about or veryclose to…

FUNCTIONALAlmost

MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

BRIAN DAVIS

CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

VESNA TRKULJA

B U R L I N G T O N A R T C E N T R EJUNE 25 TO SEPTEMBER 19 , 19 99

The works of these four regional

artists are sculptural assem-

blages; they are constructed

using compulsively

col lected, quirky,

found objects, fetish-like ele-

ments, opulent materials and

neglected cast-offs, conjured

into fantasy works

of Cornellian ilk.

These artists obsessively assemble, com-

pulsively construct, lovingly craft their

own unique visions of our most familiar

objects and cultural icons. Their particu-

lar treatments of these forms and their

unique choices of materials allow the

works to take on a certain ambiguity that

challenges us to look closer at what we

generally take for granted in the objects of our everyday existence.

The use of materials laden with meaning and metaphor is a device

used to explore and explain the layers of idea and memory

attached to complex feelings and emotions. The artists’ explo-

rations and juxtapositions of materials and ideas expand our

awareness of the importance of the everyday, of the dialogue

between the function or non-function of an object, what is useful

and what is not useful in our culture. This is a particularly relevant

dialogue in a centre such as the

Burlington Art Centre, which houses

such a diverse range of artistic activity

within its guilds and studios, where

artists are constantly creating objects

both functional and non-functional in

an attempt to tell their own personal

stories. This historic counterpoint, the

notion of craft versus fine art, function versus non-function, is a

lively issue here. Is there truly a division between the two, as has

been traditionally proclaimed? If so where is the divide? The work

of the artists in this exhibition suggests a false separation of the

two, the blurring of boundaries, the insignificance of the question,

the problems of a too dogmatic approach. The issue for them

is the telling of the story, and the materials arrive as they will to

perform the important function of communication.

CURATOR: DAWN WHITE BEATTY

1333 Lakeshore Rd., Burlington Ontario L7S 1A9Telephone: (905) 632-7796 • Fax: (905) 632-0278

� Email: Info@burlingtonar tcentre.on.ca • Website: www.burlingtonartcentre.on.ca

This publication, ‘Almost Functional’, accompanied the exhibition‘Almost Functional: Michael Allgoewer, Brian Davis, Christianne L’Esperance, Vesna Trkulja’

at the Burlington Art Centre, Burlington, Ontario June 25 to September 19, 1999Curator: Dawn White Beatty

Essay and Poems: Dawn White BeattyPublication Design: Wordsmith Design & Advertising, Hamilton

ISBN#0-919752-62-4

The Burlington Art Centre gratefully acknowledges the financial support of

our Membership, Corporate Members and Sponsors; the BAC Foundation; Arts Burlington Council;

the Volunteer Council; the City of Burlington; the Ontario Arts Council; the Provincial Ministry of Citizenship,

Culture and Recreation; The Canada Council of the Arts; and the Federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

COVER PHOTOS (left to right):

Michael Allgoewer • Detail of ‘Desire Develops an Edge’, 1999

Brian Davis • Detail of ‘Corrugated Chippendale’, 1998

Christianne L’Esperance • Detail of ‘Altar’, 1999

Vesna Trkulja • Detail of ‘destroy, degrade, demolish, devastate, disrupt, displace, dispossess, dismantle, diminish’, 1999

The objects that theseartists make are onthe verge… they beginat functional andwander into a placeof maybe or not quite,just about or veryclose to…

Michael Allgoewer’s works with wood, slate, gold and metal

leaf, found objects and natural thorns begin as suggestions of

religious and historical icons and work through notions of

power and persuasion. They are intense and elegant and suggest

dangerous actions or thoughts. He has created a new installa-

tion work for this exhibition. Entitled ‘Desire Develops an Edge’,

it is a construction that suggests medieval warfare. An arrow of

grand size hangs suspended as if being catapulted across the

gallery from an obviously nonfunctional bow structure. The

whole assemblage suggests the absurdity of the weapon and the

precarious position of the weapon maker and target. In the

artist’s words: “The arrows of desire are fired randomly by an unseen

hand. Plucked from the quiver and drawn back by a force too great to

measure, the arrow finds release from the necessary tension of the

bow. The shaft passes through the invisible shield and penetrates the

elusive human heart on the pedestal. When the arrow strikes, the

effect is immediate and irrevocable. A wound is opened and the inter-

nal, eternal bleeding begins.”

DETAIL OF THE INSTALLATION ‘DESIRE DEVELOPS AN EDGE’ • 1999 MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

Studio visit to Brian:

Woodstove scents and smoky tendrils of a

cold, snow day escape, and into Brian’s work-

shop we go like Gullivers among wondrous

cupboards of glorious coats, magical potions

and tiny furniture dreamscapes made with

bits and parts from other peoples’ lives… frag-

ments sawed and hammered into narratives

of fantasy and wonder, imagination loosed,

the conjurer, delighted, rubs his hands…

Brian Davis’s cupboards, cabinets and boxes are

containers of imagination and exhibit a fine tuned

sensitivity to the combination of cast-off materials

and fine craftsmanship. Materials as diverse as

reclaimed tin and pine, old doors and windows,

metal hooks and old furniture parts are transformed

into objects that could be, might be… functional.

For this exhibition the artist has created a fantasy

landscape that includes a life size cabin and its entire

contents, settled around a memory that the artist

holds precious, of a special uncle and his world of

Christianne L’Esperance offers lush fabrics, folds

and textures, compulsive attention to historic

detail in female costume, elaborate baroque fram-

ing and enclosed, secret places in her box works

and assemblages.

‘Altar’ is an intricately folded construction of

origami like forms of painted aluminum screen-

ing, built into a grid of open sided, paper covered

boxes. The entire effect is that of an intricately

carved altar or screen, or richly patterned brocade

in three dimensions; through the meditative act

of repetition and the poetics of geometry the

artist develops the work. “In the case of Altar, for

example, the “function” which once was the entire

purpose of the material has now been joined by a fur-

ther, less utilitarian one, this time acknowledging the

actual appearance, the look and feel of the screen as

well as its original purpose. It has to be stressed that

this latter has not been entirely abandoned since the

mesh continues its life as a filtering agent, only now

metaphorically rather than physically – a point that

would not be made if we were ever unable to identify

the material that has been used.”

Of the work ‘Enigmatic Embrace’ the artist speaks:

Vesna Trkulja begins with the idea of

female costume, dress and vest, and

meticulously assembles vast numbers of

small parts into painfully uncomfortable

garments, speaking of constraint, unwill-

ing confinement, unhappy bodies within.

Her materials are unsettling assemblages

of wire, copper and sheet metal, coins

and hardware. Her works often carry with them painful family

history, in the form of photographs or transparencies of a personal

or historical nature, assembled into garments that are somehow

more narrative structures than functional clothing. The work ‘Her

Sorrow’ is a mourning cloak that the artist made for her mother as

she watched her mourn the death of her brother, Vesna’s uncle. It

is made of roofing tiles, wood, acrylic medium, metal leaf, lacquer

and photo transparencies – small old photographs from family

archives of generations of her family, and museum photographs of

the wars that they have been subjected to and victim of the former

Yugoslavia. It is a large piece, about 8’x3’, and very heavy. The artist

suspends this piece in the gallery; with the act of suspension the

artist hopes to remove the weight of mourning from her mother.

An accompanying piece is ‘destroy, degrade, demolish, devastate,

disrupt, displace, dispossess, dismantle and diminish’, a dress form that

bristles with burned tiles and copper wires and represents the

artist’s frustration and anger at her inability to help her family

members in war torn Yugoslavia. The title derives from words

uttered by a NATO general when asked about the bombing by

NATO of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 1999.

“Whenever something is taken away from ‘where it belongs’

and given a new home to which, perhaps, it doesn’t seem to

relate, a new story begins to form around it. This aesthetic

exile, if we can so term it, informs ‘Enigmatic Embrace’

where a replica of one of the silk stockings in which Eleonora

of Toledo was buried is itself enshrined in a fetishistic casket

of sorts, lined in gold and standing like a displaced architec-

tural member. The luxury of the materials and the mystery

created by their dream-like intersection is the heart and soul

that guides me to completion…. Sometimes it starts with a

dream and I’m compelled by it; elements beginning to emerge

and indicating my direction. I follow faithfully, even when it

involves a time-consuming technical challenge that may fail.

This was the case when I knitted my replica of the stocking

without a pattern – my reply to her memory.”

The symmetry of arrangements of multiples to

produce pattern, the obsessive, time consuming

process of producing small perfect objects that

suggest function as clothing or accessories, and the

assembling of these odd objects (from functional

materials) into forms reminiscent of furniture or

furnishings all come together to produce work of

great tactile beauty and intensity.

‘ALTAR’ • 1999 • CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

BRIAN DAVIS

CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

VESNA TRKULJA

‘DESTROY, DEGRADE, DEMOLISH, DEVASTATE,DISRUPT, DISPLACE, DISPOSSESS, DISMANTLE,DIMINISH’ • 1999 • VESNA TRKULJA

PET

ERST

EVEN

S‘STORE FRONT WARDROBE’ • 1989 • BRIAN DAVIS

forest and solitude – a fantastic place of

imagination and wonder, steeped in a broth

of time to re-emerge as magical sculptural

assemblage, an Alice in Wonderland concoc-

tion combining childhood play and adult

domestication. Brian reluctantly approaches

this adult world, embellishing it whenever

possible with his fantastic collection of

details, eccentric settings and special worlds

of imagination within the functional frame-

work of woodworking.

Michael Allgoewer’s works with wood, slate, gold and metal

leaf, found objects and natural thorns begin as suggestions of

religious and historical icons and work through notions of

power and persuasion. They are intense and elegant and suggest

dangerous actions or thoughts. He has created a new installa-

tion work for this exhibition. Entitled ‘Desire Develops an Edge’,

it is a construction that suggests medieval warfare. An arrow of

grand size hangs suspended as if being catapulted across the

gallery from an obviously nonfunctional bow structure. The

whole assemblage suggests the absurdity of the weapon and the

precarious position of the weapon maker and target. In the

artist’s words: “The arrows of desire are fired randomly by an unseen

hand. Plucked from the quiver and drawn back by a force too great to

measure, the arrow finds release from the necessary tension of the

bow. The shaft passes through the invisible shield and penetrates the

elusive human heart on the pedestal. When the arrow strikes, the

effect is immediate and irrevocable. A wound is opened and the inter-

nal, eternal bleeding begins.”

DETAIL OF THE INSTALLATION ‘DESIRE DEVELOPS AN EDGE’ • 1999 MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

Studio visit to Brian:

Woodstove scents and smoky tendrils of a

cold, snow day escape, and into Brian’s work-

shop we go like Gullivers among wondrous

cupboards of glorious coats, magical potions

and tiny furniture dreamscapes made with

bits and parts from other peoples’ lives… frag-

ments sawed and hammered into narratives

of fantasy and wonder, imagination loosed,

the conjurer, delighted, rubs his hands…

Brian Davis’s cupboards, cabinets and boxes are

containers of imagination and exhibit a fine tuned

sensitivity to the combination of cast-off materials

and fine craftsmanship. Materials as diverse as

reclaimed tin and pine, old doors and windows,

metal hooks and old furniture parts are transformed

into objects that could be, might be… functional.

For this exhibition the artist has created a fantasy

landscape that includes a life size cabin and its entire

contents, settled around a memory that the artist

holds precious, of a special uncle and his world of

Christianne L’Esperance offers lush fabrics, folds

and textures, compulsive attention to historic

detail in female costume, elaborate baroque fram-

ing and enclosed, secret places in her box works

and assemblages.

‘Altar’ is an intricately folded construction of

origami like forms of painted aluminum screen-

ing, built into a grid of open sided, paper covered

boxes. The entire effect is that of an intricately

carved altar or screen, or richly patterned brocade

in three dimensions; through the meditative act

of repetition and the poetics of geometry the

artist develops the work. “In the case of Altar, for

example, the “function” which once was the entire

purpose of the material has now been joined by a fur-

ther, less utilitarian one, this time acknowledging the

actual appearance, the look and feel of the screen as

well as its original purpose. It has to be stressed that

this latter has not been entirely abandoned since the

mesh continues its life as a filtering agent, only now

metaphorically rather than physically – a point that

would not be made if we were ever unable to identify

the material that has been used.”

Of the work ‘Enigmatic Embrace’ the artist speaks:

Vesna Trkulja begins with the idea of

female costume, dress and vest, and

meticulously assembles vast numbers of

small parts into painfully uncomfortable

garments, speaking of constraint, unwill-

ing confinement, unhappy bodies within.

Her materials are unsettling assemblages

of wire, copper and sheet metal, coins

and hardware. Her works often carry with them painful family

history, in the form of photographs or transparencies of a personal

or historical nature, assembled into garments that are somehow

more narrative structures than functional clothing. The work ‘Her

Sorrow’ is a mourning cloak that the artist made for her mother as

she watched her mourn the death of her brother, Vesna’s uncle. It

is made of roofing tiles, wood, acrylic medium, metal leaf, lacquer

and photo transparencies – small old photographs from family

archives of generations of her family, and museum photographs of

the wars that they have been subjected to and victim of the former

Yugoslavia. It is a large piece, about 8’x3’, and very heavy. The artist

suspends this piece in the gallery; with the act of suspension the

artist hopes to remove the weight of mourning from her mother.

An accompanying piece is ‘destroy, degrade, demolish, devastate,

disrupt, displace, dispossess, dismantle and diminish’, a dress form that

bristles with burned tiles and copper wires and represents the

artist’s frustration and anger at her inability to help her family

members in war torn Yugoslavia. The title derives from words

uttered by a NATO general when asked about the bombing by

NATO of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 1999.

“Whenever something is taken away from ‘where it belongs’

and given a new home to which, perhaps, it doesn’t seem to

relate, a new story begins to form around it. This aesthetic

exile, if we can so term it, informs ‘Enigmatic Embrace’

where a replica of one of the silk stockings in which Eleonora

of Toledo was buried is itself enshrined in a fetishistic casket

of sorts, lined in gold and standing like a displaced architec-

tural member. The luxury of the materials and the mystery

created by their dream-like intersection is the heart and soul

that guides me to completion…. Sometimes it starts with a

dream and I’m compelled by it; elements beginning to emerge

and indicating my direction. I follow faithfully, even when it

involves a time-consuming technical challenge that may fail.

This was the case when I knitted my replica of the stocking

without a pattern – my reply to her memory.”

The symmetry of arrangements of multiples to

produce pattern, the obsessive, time consuming

process of producing small perfect objects that

suggest function as clothing or accessories, and the

assembling of these odd objects (from functional

materials) into forms reminiscent of furniture or

furnishings all come together to produce work of

great tactile beauty and intensity.

‘ALTAR’ • 1999 • CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

BRIAN DAVIS

CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

VESNA TRKULJA

‘DESTROY, DEGRADE, DEMOLISH, DEVASTATE,DISRUPT, DISPLACE, DISPOSSESS, DISMANTLE,DIMINISH’ • 1999 • VESNA TRKULJA

PET

ERST

EVEN

S‘STORE FRONT WARDROBE’ • 1989 • BRIAN DAVIS

forest and solitude – a fantastic place of

imagination and wonder, steeped in a broth

of time to re-emerge as magical sculptural

assemblage, an Alice in Wonderland concoc-

tion combining childhood play and adult

domestication. Brian reluctantly approaches

this adult world, embellishing it whenever

possible with his fantastic collection of

details, eccentric settings and special worlds

of imagination within the functional frame-

work of woodworking.

Michael Allgoewer’s works with wood, slate, gold and metal

leaf, found objects and natural thorns begin as suggestions of

religious and historical icons and work through notions of

power and persuasion. They are intense and elegant and suggest

dangerous actions or thoughts. He has created a new installa-

tion work for this exhibition. Entitled ‘Desire Develops an Edge’,

it is a construction that suggests medieval warfare. An arrow of

grand size hangs suspended as if being catapulted across the

gallery from an obviously nonfunctional bow structure. The

whole assemblage suggests the absurdity of the weapon and the

precarious position of the weapon maker and target. In the

artist’s words: “The arrows of desire are fired randomly by an unseen

hand. Plucked from the quiver and drawn back by a force too great to

measure, the arrow finds release from the necessary tension of the

bow. The shaft passes through the invisible shield and penetrates the

elusive human heart on the pedestal. When the arrow strikes, the

effect is immediate and irrevocable. A wound is opened and the inter-

nal, eternal bleeding begins.”

DETAIL OF THE INSTALLATION ‘DESIRE DEVELOPS AN EDGE’ • 1999 MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

Studio visit to Brian:

Woodstove scents and smoky tendrils of a

cold, snow day escape, and into Brian’s work-

shop we go like Gullivers among wondrous

cupboards of glorious coats, magical potions

and tiny furniture dreamscapes made with

bits and parts from other peoples’ lives… frag-

ments sawed and hammered into narratives

of fantasy and wonder, imagination loosed,

the conjurer, delighted, rubs his hands…

Brian Davis’s cupboards, cabinets and boxes are

containers of imagination and exhibit a fine tuned

sensitivity to the combination of cast-off materials

and fine craftsmanship. Materials as diverse as

reclaimed tin and pine, old doors and windows,

metal hooks and old furniture parts are transformed

into objects that could be, might be… functional.

For this exhibition the artist has created a fantasy

landscape that includes a life size cabin and its entire

contents, settled around a memory that the artist

holds precious, of a special uncle and his world of

Christianne L’Esperance offers lush fabrics, folds

and textures, compulsive attention to historic

detail in female costume, elaborate baroque fram-

ing and enclosed, secret places in her box works

and assemblages.

‘Altar’ is an intricately folded construction of

origami like forms of painted aluminum screen-

ing, built into a grid of open sided, paper covered

boxes. The entire effect is that of an intricately

carved altar or screen, or richly patterned brocade

in three dimensions; through the meditative act

of repetition and the poetics of geometry the

artist develops the work. “In the case of Altar, for

example, the “function” which once was the entire

purpose of the material has now been joined by a fur-

ther, less utilitarian one, this time acknowledging the

actual appearance, the look and feel of the screen as

well as its original purpose. It has to be stressed that

this latter has not been entirely abandoned since the

mesh continues its life as a filtering agent, only now

metaphorically rather than physically – a point that

would not be made if we were ever unable to identify

the material that has been used.”

Of the work ‘Enigmatic Embrace’ the artist speaks:

Vesna Trkulja begins with the idea of

female costume, dress and vest, and

meticulously assembles vast numbers of

small parts into painfully uncomfortable

garments, speaking of constraint, unwill-

ing confinement, unhappy bodies within.

Her materials are unsettling assemblages

of wire, copper and sheet metal, coins

and hardware. Her works often carry with them painful family

history, in the form of photographs or transparencies of a personal

or historical nature, assembled into garments that are somehow

more narrative structures than functional clothing. The work ‘Her

Sorrow’ is a mourning cloak that the artist made for her mother as

she watched her mourn the death of her brother, Vesna’s uncle. It

is made of roofing tiles, wood, acrylic medium, metal leaf, lacquer

and photo transparencies – small old photographs from family

archives of generations of her family, and museum photographs of

the wars that they have been subjected to and victim of the former

Yugoslavia. It is a large piece, about 8’x3’, and very heavy. The artist

suspends this piece in the gallery; with the act of suspension the

artist hopes to remove the weight of mourning from her mother.

An accompanying piece is ‘destroy, degrade, demolish, devastate,

disrupt, displace, dispossess, dismantle and diminish’, a dress form that

bristles with burned tiles and copper wires and represents the

artist’s frustration and anger at her inability to help her family

members in war torn Yugoslavia. The title derives from words

uttered by a NATO general when asked about the bombing by

NATO of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 1999.

“Whenever something is taken away from ‘where it belongs’

and given a new home to which, perhaps, it doesn’t seem to

relate, a new story begins to form around it. This aesthetic

exile, if we can so term it, informs ‘Enigmatic Embrace’

where a replica of one of the silk stockings in which Eleonora

of Toledo was buried is itself enshrined in a fetishistic casket

of sorts, lined in gold and standing like a displaced architec-

tural member. The luxury of the materials and the mystery

created by their dream-like intersection is the heart and soul

that guides me to completion…. Sometimes it starts with a

dream and I’m compelled by it; elements beginning to emerge

and indicating my direction. I follow faithfully, even when it

involves a time-consuming technical challenge that may fail.

This was the case when I knitted my replica of the stocking

without a pattern – my reply to her memory.”

The symmetry of arrangements of multiples to

produce pattern, the obsessive, time consuming

process of producing small perfect objects that

suggest function as clothing or accessories, and the

assembling of these odd objects (from functional

materials) into forms reminiscent of furniture or

furnishings all come together to produce work of

great tactile beauty and intensity.

‘ALTAR’ • 1999 • CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

BRIAN DAVIS

CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

VESNA TRKULJA

‘DESTROY, DEGRADE, DEMOLISH, DEVASTATE,DISRUPT, DISPLACE, DISPOSSESS, DISMANTLE,DIMINISH’ • 1999 • VESNA TRKULJA

PET

ERST

EVEN

S‘STORE FRONT WARDROBE’ • 1989 • BRIAN DAVIS

forest and solitude – a fantastic place of

imagination and wonder, steeped in a broth

of time to re-emerge as magical sculptural

assemblage, an Alice in Wonderland concoc-

tion combining childhood play and adult

domestication. Brian reluctantly approaches

this adult world, embellishing it whenever

possible with his fantastic collection of

details, eccentric settings and special worlds

of imagination within the functional frame-

work of woodworking.

FUNCTIONALAlmost

MICHAEL ALLGOEWER

BRIAN DAVIS

CHRISTIANNE L’ESPERANCE

VESNA TRKULJA

B U R L I N G T O N A R T C E N T R EJUNE 25 TO SEPTEMBER 19 , 19 99

The works of these four regional

artists are sculptural assem-

blages; they are constructed

using compulsively

col lected, quirky,

found objects, fetish-like ele-

ments, opulent materials and

neglected cast-offs, conjured

into fantasy works

of Cornellian ilk.

These artists obsessively assemble, com-

pulsively construct, lovingly craft their

own unique visions of our most familiar

objects and cultural icons. Their particu-

lar treatments of these forms and their

unique choices of materials allow the

works to take on a certain ambiguity that

challenges us to look closer at what we

generally take for granted in the objects of our everyday existence.

The use of materials laden with meaning and metaphor is a device

used to explore and explain the layers of idea and memory

attached to complex feelings and emotions. The artists’ explo-

rations and juxtapositions of materials and ideas expand our

awareness of the importance of the everyday, of the dialogue

between the function or non-function of an object, what is useful

and what is not useful in our culture. This is a particularly relevant

dialogue in a centre such as the

Burlington Art Centre, which houses

such a diverse range of artistic activity

within its guilds and studios, where

artists are constantly creating objects

both functional and non-functional in

an attempt to tell their own personal

stories. This historic counterpoint, the

notion of craft versus fine art, function versus non-function, is a

lively issue here. Is there truly a division between the two, as has

been traditionally proclaimed? If so where is the divide? The work

of the artists in this exhibition suggests a false separation of the

two, the blurring of boundaries, the insignificance of the question,

the problems of a too dogmatic approach. The issue for them

is the telling of the story, and the materials arrive as they will to

perform the important function of communication.

CURATOR: DAWN WHITE BEATTY

1333 Lakeshore Rd., Burlington Ontario L7S 1A9Telephone: (905) 632-7796 • Fax: (905) 632-0278

� Email: Info@burlingtonar tcentre.on.ca • Website: www.burlingtonartcentre.on.ca

This publication, ‘Almost Functional’, accompanied the exhibition‘Almost Functional: Michael Allgoewer, Brian Davis, Christianne L’Esperance, Vesna Trkulja’

at the Burlington Art Centre, Burlington, Ontario June 25 to September 19, 1999Curator: Dawn White Beatty

Essay and Poems: Dawn White BeattyPublication Design: Wordsmith Design & Advertising, Hamilton

ISBN#0-919752-62-4

The Burlington Art Centre gratefully acknowledges the financial support of

our Membership, Corporate Members and Sponsors; the BAC Foundation; Arts Burlington Council;

the Volunteer Council; the City of Burlington; the Ontario Arts Council; the Provincial Ministry of Citizenship,

Culture and Recreation; The Canada Council of the Arts; and the Federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

COVER PHOTOS (left to right):

Michael Allgoewer • Detail of ‘Desire Develops an Edge’, 1999

Brian Davis • Detail of ‘Corrugated Chippendale’, 1998

Christianne L’Esperance • Detail of ‘Altar’, 1999

Vesna Trkulja • Detail of ‘destroy, degrade, demolish, devastate, disrupt, displace, dispossess, dismantle, diminish’, 1999

The objects that theseartists make are onthe verge… they beginat functional andwander into a placeof maybe or not quite,just about or veryclose to…