Kristie MacDonald: Home and Away
February 17 – March 26, 2011

Kristie MacDonald, Incomplete Archive: Speculative Forgeries of Cards 1, 2 and 5 (detail), 2010

From February 17 to March 26, 2011, Open Studio presented Home and Away, a solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Kristie MacDonald. The exhibition was accompanied by a text by Toronto-based artist and writer Jen Hutton.

Combining installation, printmaking, sculpture – and even a fully functioning printing press installed in a set of dresser drawers – Kristie MacDonald’s Home and Away explores the personal archive, while referencing institutional collections through archival and musicological materials. Home and Away incorporates two installation pieces that are premised on that humble reminder of holidays past, the postcard. The work begins from postcards that MacDonald has found and purchased from flea markets; in MacDonald’s hands, the postcards become not only reminders of vacations in faraway places, but meditations on the public/private nature of their messages, potential sites for forgeries and fakes, and objects that channel our propensity to continually reconstruct meaning in remembered events. According to the accompanying essay, MacDonald “reinscribe[s] meaning to these cards by filling in the blanks that they are unable to fill on their own.

To download a PDF copy of the exhibition brochure with accompanying essay and full artist and author biographies, please click here. In order to view PDF documents, you will need to have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed on your computer.

To view photos, please click on the thumbnails below.

Kristie MacDonald holds a BFA from York University, where she studied visual art and art history. She is currently a candidate for the Masters of Information degree at the University of Toronto, specializing in Archival Studies, and devotes a significant portion of her time to Museum Studies. This is her first solo exhibition in Toronto.

Jen Hutton is a Toronto-based artist and writer.

All installation photos by Sara Kelly for Open Studio, 2011. All artwork © Kristie MacDonald.