Settle: A Swamp Ward Window Project

Two years ago, we featured Inside, a Swamp Ward Window project that consisted of various multi-coloured banners with statements suggesting the realities of everyday life for inmates.  For those who aren’t familiar, the Swamp Ward Window is an unconventional venue for contemporary art initiatives, which takes advantage of pedestrian curiosity and the intimacy of a dense urban setting.  I am pleased to share the latest, living installation at the Swamp Ward Window, titled Settle by recent Queen’s BFA grad, Katie Strang.  She explains the project as follows:

I recently installed three of my sculptures from the BFA graduating show in Jocelyn Purdie’s outdoor gallery, the Swamp Ward Window, as part of a new installation entitled Settle. Jocelyn curates the Union Gallery, and has seen the sculptures develop over the year. Her gallery, composed of the front yard and porch of 448 Bagot Street, has a mandate to explore themes of neighbourhood and community.

It was exciting to develop a project for a site with such a specific theme. I planted scarlet runner beans around the sculptures and plan to document the progress of the plants as they grow over them. I’m interested in what becoming part of a neighbourhood means to young people, particularly the tension between simultaneous desires to grow beyond our roots and to establish ourselves somewhere. I wanted the poses of figures to imply movement, and their life-like proportions to encourage pedestrians to read them as humans. I’m hoping people in the area with have opinions about the work, and it will be really interesting to see whether the bean plants are seen as threatening, or symbiotic with the figures.

You can take a look at the current state of Settle via our Flickr, but I strongly recommend that you pay the Swamp Ward Window a visit and see it in person. Since I regularly walk by this address, I’ll be sure to add more photos to help highlight how this fantastic project evolves.