21 WADE AVE #2 | TORONTO
jessica campbell & Heather Rule | homebodies | ….20 JUNE - 27 JULY 2024 .. 20 JUIN - 27 JUILLET 2024 ….
We all know what a real sculpture is: a sleek, three-dimensional form consisting of clean lines and pure shapes. A real sculpture is monumental, made from large, hard industrial materials. It certainly doesn’t make you think about soft things, like memories of your own life, or ways of feeling less alone in the world.
So what the hell is going on in this exhibition?
Heather Rule gets this all wrong by using combinations of ceramic and paper materials to create embodied forms that appear ephemeral and changeable. With the impermanent and familiar materiality of brown paper, the heads of these sculptures—including depictions of dentures, a rudimentary house form, and a pack of Du Maurier Lights, among others—evoke the fragmentary precision of certain persistent memories, equally vulnerable to change over time. Arms extend from their more corporeal ceramic pedestals, sometimes reaching out or gesturing to one another as if they are communicating, or at least keeping each other company. Together they form a collection of images in conversation, drawing out connections between seemingly disparate parts. There is a sort of tenderness and care to these objects. Now I am thinking, feeling, reflecting. No, this is not how this is supposed to go.
Then there are Jessica Campbell’s decorative objects on various shelves and plinths all made from collaged carpet. The first glaring issue with these sculptures is, of course, that they are missing a dimension. This missing axis is disguised by a sort of fool’s trompe l’oeil effect, where often incongruent, skewed views are rendered two-dimensionally, setting up different perspectives to support Man Cave decorations, statues for the Rec Room, and other pieces of decor that might be well suited to “a room of one’s own.” The titles of Campbell’s works (like Alcyoneus (Fighting my Dad about Climate Change)) allude to anecdotal histories that provide entry points to talk about bigger concerns and questions, working in tandem with the similarly relatable carpeting. Many of them are quite funny. Now I am laughing. What the hell is going on?
If you’re looking for an exhibition that subscribes to a hierarchy of material (so that you can easily tell what is important), you should look elsewhere. Here you will unfortunately be limited to the captivating idiosyncratic characteristics of handcrafted objects that use both natural and man-made, household materials, each assembling around their own systems of language. In the case of Rule’s sculptures, this comprises a highly personal vocabulary of resonant images that tell stories that, while recognizable, are not entirely legible to outsiders. In the case of Campbell’s wall works, the language is iconographic and pictorial, and equally rich with personal and historical detail.
For real sculpture fans, this is one you’ll have to see to believe.
– Bridget Moser
Jessica Campbell is an interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in textiles, drawing and comics. Drawing on a wide range of influences, including science fiction, art world politics, and her evangelical upbringing, Campbell explores ways to reflect heterogeneity through a combination of disparate media, subjects, and tone. Whether through cartoony depictions or the use of unorthodox material, her work often wields humor as a device for managing trauma. Her Chicago Works solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2018-2019 was reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Juxtapoz. She is the author of three graphic novels, including the recent Rave (Drawn and Quarterly, 2022), and her comics have been published by MoMA, the New Yorker, Hyperallergic and the Nib, among other publications. She has had previous solo exhibitions at Western Exhibitions in Chicago; Field Projects in NYC; and La Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montreal.
Her work has been included in group shows at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin; the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario; the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta; the ICA in Baltimore, MD; Richard Heller in LA; moniquemeloche in Chicago; and was included in Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Heather Rule is a multidisciplinary artist primarily working in ceramics, animation, and zine-making. Drawing on the conventions of memoir and self-portraiture, her work explores alternative forms of self-narrativization in the public construction of personal histories. She currently lives and works in Toronto.
Bridget Moser is a Toronto-based artist working in performance and video. She has presented work at Remai Modern, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Front, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Mercer Union. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award and is the 2023 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Visual Arts Award.