EXHIBITION:
Jacqueline Treloar
September
12 - September 23
"The
secret room of Giuseppa Filangeri di San Marco"
Opening Reception:
Thursday Sept 13, 7 p.m.
Saturday Sept 22 artist talk at 2 p.m
Toronto-based artist Jacqueline Treloar creates a moving statement with
this dramatic collection of oils and works on paper, a record of her time
living in a curious apartment carved out of the inner walls of the main
courtyard of Palazzo Aiutamicristo in Palermo, Sicily. Divided between
two galleries, The Secret Room of Giuseppa Filangeri di San Marco evokes
the intimacy and personality of the lavish cabinets popular among the
Renaissance aristocracy. These private spaces were devoted to the display
of an often eclectic variety of prized keepsakes, cosseted artworks, and
exotic curiosities. Brought together in the name of a imagined noblewoman,
Treloar's paintings in The Secret Room portray the intimate spaces of
an illustrious Palermitan Palace and its dramatic urban surroundings,
worked in oils on large textured canvases and coloured inks on paper using
brushes, rollers and stencils. The jewel tones and multiple layering capture
the excesses and extremes of the ancient, crumbling city, a culmination
of some two thousand years of occupation and invasion.
Palermo is dense with ancient dreams and monuments, startling colours
and contrasts.
It is not for the weak of heart. For the adventurer and visionary explorer,
however, it offers up its bottomless wealth without restraint. The centuries
have molded its antique face, and its complex urban conformation reveals
a long and tormented story. The architecture of its monuments shows singular
external contributions and myriad fusions, just as the aspect and character
of its inhabitants reveal a great diversity of ethnic groups amalgamated
over time. The Secret Room of Giuseppa Filangeri di San Marco is a selection
from Treloar's private cabinet of intensely personal and vivid experiences
in this richly secretive city.
After World War II the inner city centre was abandoned to ruin and decay,
a third of it destroyed by the intense allied bombing of July 1943 and
left to rot by the devastating political corruption of the sixties. During
her stay in the early years of the millennium - Treloar witnessed the
slow beginnings of reclamation of this heritage, represented in the exhibition
paintings of ruined churches that have been until recently playgrounds
for children, storage areas for every imaginable produce, and even stables
for horses and donkeys. One of the most famous monuments in the city centre
is the Palazzo Aiutamicristo, built in 1490 and located in the heart of
the old Arab Kalsa quarter of the inner city. The palace ballroom, scene
of a number of the exhibition images, was added to the side of the original
palace quadrangle in 1780-81 under the ownership of Don Aloisio Moncada.
The palace is presently divided into two parts, with the Calefati family
owning one half and the Sicilian regional government restoring the other
portion.