Tea Cups photos and videos in Kingston’s Next Door exhibition, June 17-August 17, 2020
I’m excited to participate in Next Door, a great exhibition initiative in Kingston presented by the Union Gallery and Skeleton Park Arts Festival, to enable people to experience artwork while walking their neighbourhood from June 17- August 17, 2020. Thank you to Jan Allen for the invitation to collaborate, and to Garry Allen for allowing his office to be turned into a projection booth every night!
Based on the history of Jan’s house, I reconfigured several of my Tea Cups photos into a site-specific print on vinyl, adhered to the glass front door. The three videos in the series will also be projected nightly in an adjacent window.
Jan writes:
“The installation Taking Tea draws on Cheryl Pagurek’s body of work with the image of the teacup to reflect the incursion of global events in the domestic sphere, especially the increasing incidence of forced migration, civil violence and environmental catastrophe. For Next Door, Cheryl teams up with artist and curator Jan Allen to create a two-part installation at 100 and 104 York Street, Kingston. The multi-media project Taking Tea refers to the history of Jan’s Skeleton Park neighbourhood home as a site of tealeaf readings. During the 1970s, people in the area would converge on a business―situated in what is now the living room at 104 York Street―to gain insight into the future and to probe the mysteries of their personal lives.
In today’s pandemic, sequestered in our homes and observing social-distancing constraints, we are made vividly aware of our collective enchainment in global forces. The Taking Tea photographic and video installation invokes tasseography, the practice of tealeaf reading to foretell the future or confirm intuition. The work speaks to our appetite for prognostication amidst uncertainty, and the ways in which we reflexively ground ourselves in times of crisis by connecting with our immediate surroundings. Taking Tea affirms the power and significance of small personal actions in precarious times.”
Click on the thumbnails below to see mock-up images, and the project press release and map.
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- Taking Tea door mock-up
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- Taking Tea projection mock-up
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- photo courtesy Chris Miner
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- Next Door press release page 1
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- Next Door press release and map page 2
Video interview with Jan Allen
More information on all the Next Door projects, audio tours, and link to download a printable map
See more photographs and videos in the Tea Cups series
