Month of Sundays

statement

Liam Crockard's solo exhibition Month of Sundays depicts the process of exaggerating and extending the tropes of artistic labor for a large exhibition. It is the literal act of annexing gestural sculptures, found objects, provisional furniture and intimate, collage-based works into a newly renovated white cube. The works alternately resist and embrace the space they've been given. Everything mutates. Tension emerges from these half-transformations: Labor is fetishized, the gesture becomes increasingly hard work. These confusions, distortions and concessions between practice and product arrive at O'Born Contemporary in various states of resolve, ultimately suggesting an active space. The artist was present, the seat is warm.

about the artist

Liam Crockard was born in Kitchener, Ontario, and now situates his practice in Toronto, where he received his BFA at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Over the last two years Crockard has exhibited internationally in Chicago, Los Angeles and Berlin, as well as organized and participated in a number of successful local shows. Citing the countless examples of jury-rigged constructions and "making-do" he witnessed growing up in his hometown as a main driving force behind his sculptural practice, Crockard uses materially driven gestures to explore the collision of industry-driven hometown nostalgia and modern art fetishism. Wandering the old neighborhood and flipping through an art textbook have become increasingly similar experiences. Ultimately, this conflation of the personal and the referential sits at the core of his practice articulated through collage, video or sculpture.