Ian Johnston: Reinventing Consumption

Organized by Dunlop Art Gallery in partnership with Access Gallery, Art Gallery of Swift Current, Esplanade Art Gallery, McMaster University Art Gallery, and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

Additional Information

January 31 to April 3, 2014 at Central Gallery.
Artist Talk: Friday, January 31, 6:00 pm, RPL Film Theatre
Opening Reception: Friday, January 31, 7:00 pm, Central Gallery

Reinventing Consumption is a three-room installation by sculptor Ian Johnston, whose work investigates object production while questioning the cycles that eventually see the castoffs of the material world enter sensitive biological ecospheres. The first space, The Inventor's Room, provides a glimpse into the glorious creative process of making. The Antechamber enlists the tropes of mass production and considers the scale at which we create and consume. The Chamber provides a space to contemplate the environmental impact of mass production through the forces of breath, fire, and water.

Ian Johnston is an architect-turned-sculptor based in Nelson, BC. He has exhibited his sculptural ceramic work internationally since the mid-nineties. Johnston studied architecture at Algonquin College and Carleton University in Ottawa, and with the University of Toronto at Paris, France. Prior to opening his Nelson studio in 1996, he spent five years working at the Bauhaus Academy in post-Berlin Wall East Germany. At the Bauhaus, together with two architects, he developed and facilitated a series of semester-long international, interdisciplinary workshops around themes of urban renewal and public intervention in a tumultuous time of cultural transformation. His current work examines our relationship with the environment in installations that use ceramic and mixed media and appeal to multiple senses of the viewer.

Ian Johnston, Reinventing Consumption (Installation View), 2014. Photo by the University of Regina Photography Department.