Statement of Intent:
Portals will consist of a series of photographs of houses (tentatively seven pictures, dimensions 11x14) in suburban neighbourhoods taken from the non-intrusive vantage point of the pedestrian casually surveying. Photographs will capture coinciding translucent surfaces and transitional spaces -- the experience of looking into one window, and out of another simultaneously. Here the boundaries between public and private become confused, as intermediary places of entrance and exit to interior and exterior space overlap. The casual viewer becomes implicated as a kind of voyeur, regardless of intention or awareness. At the same time, this surveillance is hollow, in that the object of the viewer’s gaze is not a private matter, but a continuation of exterior space. This experience of looking into the private sphere to see nothing, or see through it serves as a basis of inquiry regarding the legitimacy of claims for the existence of inside or outside space in a world saturated with surveillance.
Artist Bio:
Laura McKillop is an undergraduate student in SFU’s Contemporary Arts program for the Visual Arts.