HOME SWEET HOME
Couches have a symbolic association to home.
Many rituals take place on them but when they lose their function, they
are sold, given away, or disposed of. Pat Alysworth has reupholstered
a series of sofas with handmade covers covered with text. She has placed
them in several inner city and downtown core locations where displacement
of people has occurred, or near places where laws are made leading to
displacement. The words she has imprinted on the furniture refers to the
physical removal of homeless people from the downtown core and the inner
city, provoking questions about gentrification, who has to power to remove
people from public spaces, and who is being removed from these spaces.
Alysworth is troubled by the displacement of people and the repercussions
of their removal. Where do the homeless go?
ARTIST STATEMENT
Much of my artwork relates to the personal, or more specifically my personal
politic. It is about my healing, fixations, thoughts, analysis, deconstructions,
suffocation, immobility, losses, and dysfunction. It is what I experience
and what I see around me. I am a pessimist who wants to be an optimist.
I am a person who is never in or out of the picture, who is always traversing
the rough ride of the in-between. I am one of many out there on the margins
and I want our ride to be a little less rough, somewhat meaningful, and
acknowledged. It is from this place that my artwork diverges from the
personal to social political realms.
HOME SWEET HOME
PAST WORK
Mourning for Maine, video still, 2006
Untitled, oil on pressed board, 2005
Untitled, oil on pressed board, 2005
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