04. Mary Mattingly (New York), House and Universe: Sphere and Cube

House and Universe: Sphere, performance, June 21, 7 - 9 PM, Kitchener and Waterloo. Photo above by Robert McNair.

House and Universe: Sphere and Cube installation: Rotunda Gallery, Kitchener City Hall, 200 King St W, Kitchener, ON N2G 4G7.

House and Universe, video projection: Sky Gallery on the Cube, Kitchener City Hall, June 21, 9 - 11 PM.

House and Universe: Sphere and Cube consists of two sculptures, a sphere and cube made from personal objects tied together, and six photographs illustrating the artist's performance practise. During the Summer Lights event on the June 21st, Mary Mattingly will lead a procession along King Street beginning at Kitchener City Hall and and ending at Waterloo Public Square. Participants will take as few or as many of their personal objects and bundle them together, carrying rolling, or otherwise transporting their bundles with along the route. During the evening of the procession, there will be a video slideshow on the Kitchener City Hall Cube of photographs of personal objects from Mary Mattingly's sculptures.

“The route of the procession narrates different rituals of production, consumption, and discard. We will bundle and strap objects to ourselves, carrying them with us, rolling or pushing them alongside of us through Kitchener and Waterloo’s main street. We will pull our objects through sites that facilitate the consumption and storage of objects, illustrating the absurdity of the performance, but maybe also the larger situation. Sites like Waterloo Public Square and Kitchener City Hall are sites that illustrate local interconnection. The objects made, bought, and used affect everyone around the world, either directly or indirectly. It’s this interconnection that has led me to the procession. Considering every relationship that went into making these objects, can we care for an object’s life and death in a similar way to a human’s? What are the roles that these objects play in our lives and in the lives of others?”

Mary Mattingly is an artist based in New York. In 2011 she was a featured speaker in our Big Ideas in Art and Culture lecture series. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, the Seoul Art Center, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New York Public Library, deCordova Museum and Sclupture Park, and the Palais de Tokyo. She participated in smARTpower initiated by the U.S. Department of State and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the James L. Knight Foundation, Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, Yale University School of Art, the Harpo Foundation, NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, and the Art Matters Foundation. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Artforum, ArtNews, Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Financial Times, Le Monde Magazine, New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and on BBC News, MSNBC, Fox News, News12, NPR, WNBC, and on Art21's New York Close Up series. In 2012 she launched the Flock House Project: three spherical living-systems that were choreographed through New York City’s five boroughs. Mattingly also founded the Waterpod Project, a barge-based public space containing an autonomous habitat that migrated through New York’s waterways. Over 200,000 people visited the Waterpod in 2009.