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Home and Away, 21" x 26", graphite, watercolour, chine colle (etching on Kurotani), 2012 |
Shipping and Receiving showcases the continuation of a body work in which Brotman explores the reconstruction, from memory, of houses that she inhabited in two countries. In these new works, the permanence of a house with a basement that was referenced previously in Mnemonic Stoop has given way to the transitory nature of the mobile home. The model caravans and trailers constructed by Brotman are based on those her family rented to travel long distances across Canada and into the US, completing the summer migration from cities to provincial and national parks that is a quintessential Canadian experience.
Installed alongside the paper caravans are cases made of foamcore. Made in order to protect works in transit, the cases, which echo the shape of the caravans, become constructions of architectural interest. Drawings, exhibited with the caravans, speak of travel by trailer and by imagination.
Brotman’s exhibition history includes solo shows at Odd Gallery, Open Studio, Angell, and loop Gallery. She has been part of two- and three-person exhibitions at McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Eastern Edge Gallery, St. John’s, and Mount Saint Vincent University Gallery, Halifax. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Purdue University, IN, University of Minnesota, MN, University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, and at the Jingdezhen Museum of Ceramics, Jingdezhen, China. Brotman has forthcoming exhibitions at Zweigstelle Berlin, the German Consulate in Toronto, The Rooms in St. John’s and the Douro printmaking biennale in Alijo, Portugal. She has been invited to undertake an artistic residency at the Áras Éanna Art Centre, Aran Islands, Ireland in the summer of 2012.
Her work is represented in public and corporate collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ernst and Young, the Toronto Stock Exchange, BMO group, the Universities of Alberta, Toronto, and Colorado at Boulder, and the Sanbao Museum in China.
Brotman teaches in the Studio Art Program at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus.
Art critic R.M. Vaughan of the Globe and Mail newspaper wrote a very favourable review of Yael Brotman and Tara Cooper's show at loop. The link is here.
To see more of her work, visit Yael Brotman's website here. Learn more about Yael Brotman’s work during a Question and Answer Session at loop on Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 2PM.
