Windsor artist gets rare twin billing of shows at two SW Ontario galleries

Christopher McNamara has enduring memories of the city.

With two concurrent exhibitions at galleries in Windsor and London, the award-winning artist explores the urban landscapes of his past.

McNamara has exhibited and performed across Canada, the United States and Europe, and now for the next few months at Art Windsor-Essex and Museum London — a rare doubleheader for any artist.

“My work tends to be focused on ideas about the city and about the inhabitants in cities,” said McNamara, who splits his time between his Windsor hometown and Ann Arbor, Mich., where he teaches in the University of Michigan’s department of film, television and media.

He is known for his audiovisual installations and performances.

When Art Windsor-Essex approached him to curate a show, he unearthed pieces from the gallery’s private collection and developed his own work around them.

“I was interested in artists and how they think about and represent ideas of the city,” he said. “All of the works for the most part have city references to them.

“They’re urban settings, or maybe suburban settings, but they all sort of speak to a kind of geography.”

For his collection at Art Windsor-Essex, ‘It Don’t Exist’ — Imagining the City Within and Beyond the Archive, McNamara built three dioramas that offer a unique look at real places in Windsor and Detroit, some that no longer exist. The miniature models, he says, are no more than a few feet wide and call to mind the likes of tiny train sets and snow globes.

“They’ve got this kind of floaty, fantasy sort of feeling to them,” said McNamara. “There’s something about these self-contained little worlds that I think people can find a certain kind of attraction to.

“They’re not meant to be historically accurate in any way. They’re really more about memory, and about how our memories construct these new versions.”

The dioramas are autobiographical accounts of McNamara’s youthful haunts, including past Windsor mainstays like the Drake Tavern and the House of Lee Restaurant.

One miniature model replicates the beauty salon he visited as a young boy.

“I have very vivid memories of going to a beauty parlour when I was a child with my mother,” he said. “I was not old enough to go to school, so I would go with her everywhere and I remember going to the beauty salon and being totally enthralled with the atmosphere and also being completely physically ill because of the smell of the perm solution.”

His solo exhibition at Museum London — Vivid Against the Little, Soft Cities — also explores the human landscape.

McNamara uses video projections, dioramas, and photographs — including film captured in the 1980s that had never been developed before.

The most ambitious piece in the show, according to McNamara, is a three-dimensional video projection that requires viewers to wear special glasses.

McNamara’s vision is dipping into his well of memories to reimagine and re-explore the city.

View the exhibits

‘It Don’t Exist’ — Imagining the City Within and Beyond the Archive is on the third floor of Art Windsor-Essex (401 Riverside Dr. W.) from Nov. 14. to Feb. 18.

Vivid Against the Little, Soft Cities is currently showing at Museum London (421 Ridout St. N.) until Feb. 11.

mmazak@postmedia.com