Last Thursday, I nervously entered the dimly lit York Street basement of Connexion Artist Run Centre formerly known as Gallery Connexion. The gallery had opened their doors for an interactive potluck art show. I walked downstairs and towards the center of the small brick room, passing the counter filled with delicious food items and a cask filled with local draft beer.
There was a dozen or so people congregating and conversing about the art which surrounded them, among the people was Toronto native Chris Foster. He’s the creator of The Frontiers in Real Estate collection which was the featured exhibit at Connexion on Thursday.
Foster moved from the suburbs of Toronto to Halifax to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. While living there he began working as a carpenter, his task was to restore historical buildings in the old city. He fell in love with the area and has been working out of it ever since.
“The work is about feeling claustrophobic, an escape to the highlands so to speak.” Foster said while looking out towards his exhibit with a slight smile. Overhead lighting illuminates six or seven miniature toy vehicles sitting on pedestals. Each with its own hand made,wooden cabin on top, complete with curtains in the windows and stove pipes on the roofs. He calls them Rolling Homes, and they make up half of his current collection.
“I started thinking about the concept of living without paying rent, and these fears and emotions I’ve had, like feelings of entrapment and concerns over environmental destruction,” said Foster.
Most of Foster’s work appears to be going upwards, never ending contraptions with no definitive starting or ending point.
Many of the prints and collages which hang on the walls feature makeshift buildings, elegant fortresses and towers built around RVs and motor-homes. However, what immediately draws attention is the centerpiece, a seven-foot-tall structure stands in the middle of the room.
At first glance it appears to be the roof of a shed without walls with a Victorian-era chair sitting beneath it. The roof is shingled with different objects such as brown waxed vegetable boxes, cardboard and recycled wood. However, it is not completely enclosed. The top remains gaping open and allows someone sitting under it to peer up towards the sky.
“Things don’t come so immediately, sort of one thing at a time, you make work then you think about that work and it informs how you make more work,” said Foster.
John Cushnie, director of Connexion says that having artists like Foster and other contemporary artists come into the Fredericton area is a good thing.
“The main goal of the gallery is to be able to show contemporary art without the need to sell it,” said Cushnie. “We are the only gallery dedicated to contemporary art in Fredericton.”
He says Connexion is the only place to see this type of art, that wouldn’t otherwise be shown in Fredericton.
The Artist Run Center is a space where artists are able to meet with other artists, show their work, and talk about it all in one space.
Chris Foster’s Frontiers in Real Estate will be travelling to Dawson City, Yukon after leaving Fredericton.
