May 12 – June 16, 2012
Opening: Saturday, May 12, 4 – 9 p.m.
DE LUCA FINE ART GALLERY
217 Avenue Road
Toronto, ON, M5R 2J3
T: 416-537-4699
E: corrado@delucafineart.com
www.delucafineart.com.
Hours: Tues–Sat 11–5 p.m.
For many years Barbara made her own clothes, and in Winnipeg worked in a clothing factory to save money for grad school. After completing her MFA, she worked as a textile pattern designer in Montreal and this influenced the designs on her steel dresses. Each metal dress is fabricated from a single sheet of cold-rolled steel. The dress shapes vary, and delicate forms are cut out to resemble textile patterns, images from nature, or forms traditionally associated with the category labelled “femininity”.
This work originated as a way of investigating the social constructions of identity, in particular the categories of masculinity and femininity. Through these terms and their preconceptions, Barbara investigates the notion of gendered subjectivity. In her work, she uses the meanings culturally inscribed onto materials and processes as a way of examining the construction of gender. She is particularly drawn to feminism’s acceptance of domestic activities as a valid approach to contemporary art practice. Thus, Barbara considers the making of these steel dresses as “sewing with fire”. She interweaves both contradictory and supportive correlations between material, image, and process in order to hypothesize alternative visions of identity.
In much of her art practice, Barbara attempts to recuperate what has been considered “feminine”, which historically has been discredited. Whether imbued by training or biologically inherited, Barbara believes that many of these qualities are of vital importance to our survival. In her work, she is interested in developing tactics that can further illuminate and unravel contradictions between cultural notions about gender and our daily lived experience.
Barbara Hunt’s last exhibition in Toronto – Antipersonnel – was at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2001