M Leighton-Hern & Mira Berlin
inhabit

DECEMBER 6 TO 16

Alternative Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Friday 11:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Saturday, December 9 and 16, 2:00 - 5:00 PM (artists will be in attendance)

The Red Head Gallery is pleased to present inhabit, a joint exhibition by artist M Leighton-Hern and Mira Berlin as part of our December rental exhibition.

To inhabit is to take time to be in a space. To feel it, to look around, to understand what it is.  To observe what’s going on, to make the best of it through getting closer to understanding it even though its not the best place to be in, just to be in it for now.

Stepping out again its makes more sense, more of a sense of cohesiveness, integration, relationship of each space to the other, context. The transitions between, thresholds, similarities, differences, textures, light, dark, ranges of sensations.

To know it better.  To know that this is probably only the first exploration, there  may be others. Later. But this is the first so maybe there is the most to learn from it, the rest may be a re-vision of what is already known. To awaken to it all, be open to understanding the finer grains, the subtle sensations but also the big huge sensations that maybe were too huge to feel before.

Now standing in the spaces, with you.

These two artists present an exploration of spaces both internal and external through their own lenses. The artists have been working in close proximity over the past year and have developed a dialogue about their work and as such certain relationships and elements have been explored together and these exchanges have no doubt influenced each other’s work.

M Leighton-Hern is a visual artist and writer whose practice is a way into the self and discovery of unconscious drives that help explain the way we are.  It is also a way out of the self to find patterns and meanings to help quell the anxieties. She finds the interior and the exterior are alike in many ways, constructed of parallaxes and conflicts, some of which will be worked out and resolved in the process, many of which will not.

Leighton-Hern has an educational background in liberal arts while attending various alternative arts schools, including a BA in creative writing from Vermont College. 

Mira Berlin is an artist and writer living in Toronto. She holds a BA in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and MA in Art History from McGill University. 

Sometimes I find myself having become desperate. I am only telling you this in an attempt to explain what happens in the room. The room is where I spend my time. It is so big it risks losing me in it forever. The fist thing I did when I got to the room was draw a shape that felt like it could hold me. Outside the shape the world waited and things were silent. But soon the shape fell apart and desperation flooded in. I drew another shape, smaller than the first. It was more stable, even though I had to contort my whole lower half to get inside. When it collapsed I tried another and then another and another and another. The air became heavy and the shapes began to fly away. I was surprised by the lack of gravity in the room. After a while of floating and trying to catch the shapes and being terrified, I found myself making a wager: if I can be in here five minutes more, things might start to settle down.