From Interval
Lynda Gammon’s gritty architectures at Stride Gallery
From the front of Stride Gallery Lynda Gammon’s sculptures appear to be architectural models like any other.
The works are similar to architectural models because they are 3D yet are also discreet conceptual renderings that give suggestions about what could be a larger finished form. They also hint at the moods and visual themes of the building but this is where the similarity stops. Salvage 20 and Salvage 21 are not schemes for spiffy new buildings they are more akin to sedimentary layers of an old house showing each piece of the building process in cross-section. Seeing Gammon’s layered constructions is like flaking off a thick chip of paint to reveal all the past colours repainted over the years.
Her scavenged materials (plywood foam core black-and-white photos) could be haphazardly combined like sweeping up the garbage from the floor of an architect’s studio to find purpose for their scraps. But Gammon’s scribbles notations and measurements occasionally scrawled across the surface of layers suggest a meticulous process. The works look as if they begin with a strict idea and then get reworked until there’s not much of the original left.
Salvage 20 dominates one of Stride’s long walls. The facing sculpture is a variation on the same materials and process and together they look like a diptych that was made specifically for the long narrow gallery. Despite hanging off the wall rather precariously the work fits in the space well with a good amount of space around each work to get in close to see every angle and crevice.
The exhibition requires persistent investigation to see all the hidden rooms and interior spaces piled one on top of the other. There are tiny model chairs tables dressers a washing machine and dryer hidden within the structures. The constructions themselves are relatively scrappy but these dollhouse furnishings look much more solid than the rooms that are collapsing around them.
There are two real pieces of furniture sandwiched between the many layers — half of a moulded side table and a white folding chair. Wire cages that are usually used to protect light bulbs are nestled into an overhang of cardboard and wood. They reference the most basic of interiors: a stripped room without furniture populated only by a single light bulb that hangs bare from the ceiling. The light illuminates a tiny scene. It can only be spied through a break in the wall where a side table sits in front of a dresser in a similarly bare room.
Underneath is a sloppy dangling power cord but somehow taping it down in a pristine way (as if the cord was supposed to disappear from view altogether) wouldn’t seem quite right either. These are messy sprawling works and the rips rough edges leaky glue and dangling cords add the feeling that the houses are the product of process and revision. Strips of carpet are glued together with dots of yellow poofy caulking. Plywood sheets screw and foam core (with a big tear on the underside of a folded piece from being stressed to the breaking point of the material) are also hacked through with an Exacto knife to create quick doors and windows. Insulation fibre provokes an itch just looking at it. These details make it clear that Gammon’s objective is far away from making model houses: instead her houses look abandoned well-worn or dilapidated maybe even ripped apart by an earthquake.
Black-and-white photographs are also used to create layering and depth within the sculptures. Of the Canadian photographers who have documented interior spaces many do so with a distant point of view and rarely include human subjects: think Lynne Cohen or Iain Baxter& who recently showed at the Nickle Arts Museum. Gammon’s shots are not an exception to this but they show spaces that she has been in without people and use the eerie emptiness to convey another dimension within the sculptural space. Even though some of the images are indistinct and blurry a vague sense of walking through the original spaces remains.
Her photographs refer to the very process of documenting archiving and simply wandering in and observing architectural spaces. Slightly curled prints show a lamp a constructed space with ceiling beams exposed and an expanse of neutral-hued flooring. A little camper van is made out of black-and-white photographs and duct tape. Some of the photos are taped carefully along the edges; others have little tears along their edges further evidence that she rips them up and repositions them as part of the process. When the subject is out of focus the tonal variations of black-and-white prints or enlarged film grain adds subtle textures to Gammon’s structures.
The combination of built spaces and imagery implicate our memories through multiple senses: sight touch and certainly smell. It’s as if Gammon’s floorboards are ready to send up a gasp of dusty mildew as soon as someone enters this abandoned model house.
