August 12 - September 10

Lauren Hall - guest artist - revew

http://thestar.blogs.com/untitled/2009/08/return-triumphant-lauren-hall-at-department-and-peak-gallery.html

"Doctrine of the Hinterland" - installation
On view - North Patio

Closing Reception Thursday 10 September 2 to 6 pm

Lauren Hall has created a new installation for her exhibition at Peak Gallery as a Guest Artist. Doctrine of the Hinterland is a site-specific sculpture located in the gallery’s newly renovated Backyard. Recalling mountain ranges, sails, and temporary outdoor shelters, Doctrine of the Hinterland is a forty-foot long abstract chain of mountains tethered to the building’s walls and patio using clothesline wrapped in transparent green pallet wrap. Located directly adjacent to a GO Train line, Doctrine of the Hinterland alludes to a national history of wilderness exploration via rail.

Using building and packaging materials such as cardboard, bubble wrap and Styrofoam, Lauren Hall creates sculptures and paintings that examine travel, wonder and wilderness through proxies of touristic sites. Her structures share an affinity with post-minimalism and abstraction. Hall approaches making her work the way one would tackle the set for a school play or game show, and considers stereotypes, clichés, and accepted ideas of the outdoors, while thinking about natural phenomena like cloud formation, geysers, calving icebergs, shadow and fog.

Lauren Hall is a Canadian visual artist who recently returned to Ontario after living and working in Berlin. She graduated from the University of Waterloo’s Fine Arts Program in 2006 as the valedictorian, and has exhibited in Canada, the United States and Germany. Hall is included in the exhibition The Sun Has Turned To Glass at The Department Gallery, Toronto, and will be included in SHOWCASE.09 at Cambridge Galleries in September.