Geographic neighbours Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario share a border, as well as a distinctive urban environment. Christopher McNamara, an artist interested in sound as much as the visual experience, works on both sides of this border, and through his work reveals a narrative imbued with technology and fascinated with the pace of everyday experience.
This exhibition includes two works that explore the sights and sounds of cities caught by camera, and relocated to installation and short film. His latest work, Falling in Place, is inspired by a somber short story of the same name written by the artist’s father, Eugene McNamara. It tells us the account of a young woman, a pianist, and the accompanying tale of the train engineer who drives the locomotive that eventually strikes her. It is a haunting tale (told through three 3D films that are shown simultaneously) reinterpreted into unsettling, but beautiful, films.
In the work Amulet City: On Location, McNamara provides us with a city populated by narratives, stories housed in tiny buildings constructed complete with billboards and branded signs. The buildings reveal the influence of geography on the artist, and yet they are not tied to any specific location. These miniature landscapes create a sense of nostalgia, yet embody a place that never was.
This exhibition brings to the forefront small details of lives lived and makes them iconic, in effect creating familiar worlds we sense we may have inhabited.