3rd floor, Eleanor Roosevelt Terrace.
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." Eleanor Roosevelt
Suspended in the middle of the Eleanor Roosevelt terrace is an inverted tree, that has been covered in thousands of small glass mirrors; a dazzling arboreal cousin o{ the disco ball that spins in the nearby ballroom. Small flares of reflected light creep into the rooms that surround the terrace, invading private spaces like a memory or a persistent melody.
The Roosevelt Terrace feels familiar even as you enter for the first time. Transported by the warm air on “a summer evening,” romance, nostalgia or by “the beauty of their dreams;” one could easily lose their bearings, forget time and place, fall for the distraction of a decoy.
Issues of reclamation, transformation and labour resurface consistently in my art practice. My recent work explores my relationships with my environment, both the natural world and my sense of place through architecture. I am interested in trees because they speak of impermanence and a desire to control what is wild.
Janet Morton has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and abroad. She has received numerous awards and accolades for her work that playfully and critically examines our relationship to the natural world and everyday objects.
Since 1992, Morton has used knitting and sewing symbolically and subversively in her work as blatant low-tech “metaphors.” By employing these stereotypically domestic techniques and materials, Morton shifts the axis from public to private, mundane to monumental, and attempts to address the confounding and complex ways that “value” is assigned to both objects and time investment.
