Trimmings

Part of the exhibition La demeure (The Dwelling), Optica Gallery (Montréal), September 13 - October 13, 2002. Curated by Marie Fraser.

"Maintaining a connection between artistic experience and everyday, even domestic life, this exhibition brings together artists who interrogate the notion of the dwelling, opening it up to a reflection on mobility, nomadism, housing shortages, and on the encounter between private and city life. Today, from our living space, and in the midst of cultural motion, the dwelling is fashioned by its own quest and by the idea of inhabiting the unusual."

(Optica Gallery, September 2002)

All of the interventions took place within Montreal. A total of 11 interventions took place over the duration of the project. Their duration varied according to weather and other "interventions" like vandalism and insect ingestion.

"Shelley Miller creates an interstice between the domestic universe and industrialized city space. Fragments of ornamental motifs, sketched with cake icing, partially cover the graffiti on the brick walls of residential and commercial buildings in various spaces throughout the city. At once trimming and wall-covering, Trimmings recalls interior decorative spaces and the opulent life style associated with them. Turned inside-out like a glove, however, this interior becomes exterior, and private space breaks out into social space."

"The colourful motifs, made of sugar and meringue, seem suspended between an aura of ornamental sumptuousness - the kitsch world of excess associated with popular culture - and the social gestures that graffiti represent. Beyond the interwoven critical references, by using a perishable, self-disintegrating material, Miller also underscores the expunction and disappearance of signs of private life in public space."

(Excerpt from Optica Gallery website September, 2002)