D_Raw
D_Raw
Raw Gallery of Art and Architecture_Winnipeg, Manitoba (2011)
Located in the basement level of a century-old warehouse in the industrial area of Winnipeg, the Raw Gallery promotes the exhibition of work that is site specific and engages with the community in which it is situated. Architect Ronnie Araya and I were invited to build a project in Raw that could act as a ‘scaffolding’ for members of the community to engage with and build on for the length of the exhibition.
We began by procuring bundles of wood from an abandoned century-old settlement house in the prairie landscape outside of Winnipeg. This wood became served as our primary material, and the cracks of the ceiling and columns from the old wood of the gallery served as the anchoring from which our project would emerge.
Using the wood strips as ‘nails’ they were hammered into the cracks and woven into a scaffolding. Being held only by the tension of the bent wood, and the compression of the solid wood ceiling above, the structure emerged. The flexible nature of the wood and the compressive stiffness caused the shape of the structure to emerge as each piece was added.
This then served as a framework that the public used to weave their own coloured pieces, slowly transforming the singular form, slowly into a complex and heterogeneous composition, like the community that visited the gallery
Project partners: Ronnie Araya , the RAW Gallery
