Title

A Fine Contamination

Artist

Morrison, Alex

Date

2015

Medium

aluminum

Type

sculpture

Dimensions

152.4cm height x 114.3cm width

Accession Number

PA2015.1

Location

BAG Fireside Room

Category

City of Burnaby Public Art Collection

Collection

Public Art

Lat/Long

49.241025,-122.971271

View in Google Maps

http://www.google.com/maps?q=49.241025,-122.971271

Artist Alex Morrison was commissioned to design a chandelier for the Burnaby Art Gallery’s Fireside Room, which originally functioned as a billiards room and smoking parlour. The resulting artwork, titled A Fine Contamination, references different stylistic periods by synthesizing Arts & Crafts, Art Deco and Postmodern forms and materials. Morrison, known for his interest in domestic and institutional architectures, exhibited in Burnaby Art Gallery’s 2015 collaboration with Simon Fraser University Galleries Alex Morrison: Phantoms of a Utopian Will / Like Most Follies, More Than a Joke and More Than a Whim. As part of this exhibition, Morrison looked at the role of the house and its varied uses. Built in 1911, the space has functioned as a genteel home, a Benedictine Monastery, a cult house, a frat house, and for more than 50 years, as the Burnaby Art Gallery. Morrison’s work stacks layers of history and use upon each other, pointing out how a style of the past might fade away, only to re-emerge and ‘contaminate’ the present.

Alex Morrison is a Canadian artist who currently lives and works in Vancouver. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Vancouver Art Gallery; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; Musee d’art contemporain de Montréal; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Kunsthalle Vienna; Witte de With, Rotterdam; the 17th Sydney Biennial; Frankfurt Kunstverein; and Kunstverein Hannover. In 2015, the Burnaby Art Gallery and SFU Galleries produced the publication Phantoms of a Utopian Will: Like Most Follies, More than a Joke and More than a Whim.