Aimée Henny Brown, a Vancouver-based artist, will have her artwork featured at the ACT Art Gallery in Maple Ridge beginning June 23 until July 28.
Henny Brown’s exhibit is called sub_URBAN and it references various sites and structures in Maple Ridge.
Henny Brown worked with the Maple Ridge Museum and the ACT Gallery for a year to create the collage-based artwork that explores the current and historical landscape of Maple Ridge.
Henny Brown explained she uses archives and research to create contemporary art with historical content.
Many collages seen in the sub_URBAN exhibit begin by cutting and pasting materials, then combining printmaking or digital technology.
Identity and shelter are two themes that Henny Brown explores.
With an interest in history and architecture, Henny Brown explained that Maple Ridge’s food-based agricultural history has taken a shift into a suburban community in the last 100 years.
“How does an area like Maple Ridge maintain a sense of identity when their purpose and reason of being has totally shifted in the last hundred years?”
The exhibit features pieces that relate past, present and future architectures and landscapes.
Through exploring the Maple Ridge archives, Henny Brown also discovered parallels with her own interests in survivalism, shelter, and refuge, which are reflected in her artwork.
“Historically, what does shelter mean, where are we at right now with the idea in suburban or urban areas, and imagining what the architectural future could look like?”
Henny Brown said her art also explores current issues in Maple Ridge, such as the housing crisis.
“The underlying current of a lot of this work comes from an awareness of a very serious sustainable housing shortage. The work itself is not political, but anytime we talk about home, security and shelter, we have to factor in that it’s not accessible to everyone.”
Henny Brown hopes viewers will consider their own relationships with shelters and structures.
“Another series in the exhibition is an architectural proposal to use collages to build new structures from things of the past. I’m hoping the marriage of past, present and future will collapse together within the show to act as a primer so we can contemplate these things without getting too stuck in the political.”
Henny Brown said viewers of sub_URBAN may recognize structures and landscapes around Maple Ridge.
• Saturday, June 23 is the opening reception, from 2 to 4 p.m. with free admission.
On Saturday, June 30, Henny Brown will give a talk about her work at 2 p.m.