Carmela Laganse: Spread

Additional Information

Reception and Artist's Talk: Saturday, March 23 at 1:00 pm

Dunlop Art Gallery is pleased to present Spread, an exhibition by Regina artist, Carmela Laganse at the Sherwood Village Branch Gallery. This suite of sculptures combines ceramics and furniture design techniques to create seductive forms, reminiscent of luscious Victorian fixtures. Oddly, these pieces are not designed for leisure, comfort, or luxury but suggest an entirely different function, one that evokes timeless carnal obsessions with bodily purging, consumption, blood and the mythologies of the vampire. Laganse's work sets the scene for acts such as controlled and civilized blood-letting, a historical medical practice used to alleviate a slew of ailments by draining excess or diseased blood. For example, Scrag End ensures that the sitter's neck is sacrificially exposed, as if awaiting the hedonistic bite of a vampire.

Mindful of the bodily cycles of ingestion and elimination, Laganse disturbingly names the works in this series after foods we eat - a scrag end is an inexpensive cut of meat taken from the neck of a lamb. Perhaps more enthralling is the suggestion of the reciprocal relationship between the vampire and its victim through the exchange of blood and immortality, highlighting the thin boundary between pleasure and pain.

Originally from Winnipeg, Carmela Laganse currently resides in Regina. She has exhibited widely throughout Canada, the USA and internationally. In 2010, her work was included in the Gardiner Museum's critically acclaimed exhibition, Breaking Boundaries. Laganse has an active teaching record and extensive experience working in the studios of Canadian universities and residency centres. She holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and a MFA from Ohio University.

Carmela Laganse, Spread (Installation View), 2013.