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Cheryl Pagurek

 

  • born in 1967 in Ottawa, Ontario
  • grandparents emigrated from Poland in the 1920s
  • B.F.A. Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario (1990); M.F.A. University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia (1992)

expanded images click on thumbnails at left to view larger images

Cheryl Pagurek has long devoted her mixed-media installation work to the exploration of the home as a space of personal identity, using photography and installation to create contrast between private and public identities, between scenes of "reality" and the constructed space of the rooms she fabricates, between concrete objects and illusionary projections. Pagurek's 1994 installation piece, 5 Fraserwood Ave., Apt. #2 explored the life and immigration of her Polish-Jewish grandparents, juxtaposing a cozy living-room interior with photographs of factory life and a Jewish cemetery. She explains, "I wish to explore the ways in which my grandparents’ immigrant experience and personal losses determined the domestic environment with which they surrounded themselves in later life. The particular ornate and flowery character of their home reflects their conception of "success" and "comfort." Their living room of gilt fixings, busy combinations of patterns and colours and highly embellished furniture represents all that is opposite to the bleakness of their past hardships as immigrants finding their way in a new country, of losing their families in the Second World War" (quoted in Allen, 1994). In Coverage (1995) the artist projected news events onto an installation of a domestic space (a replica of her own living room), continuing the examination of tension between public and private, between the safe and decorative interior and the bleak, harsh exterior world. In Send in the Clowns (1994), she used memories of her childhood bedroom to construct an interior space that included toys, wallpaper with a circus motif, and brightly-coloured furniture. Into this childish interior she projected images of public spaces such as alleys and industrial sights, jarring the viewer with the contrast. The 1996 exhibit entitled Interview featured both the Coverage series and the series Send in the Clowns. Donna Jones commented on the effect of Pagurek’s work in 1995, writing: "Cheryl is not just exposing the thinness of the wall between public and the private, she is also positioning the viewer of her images as one who is looking into the window created by the physical edges of the photograph. The viewer is an intruder akin," she says, "to a real estate open house who intrudes on the private living space of another living person." Pagurek has taught sculpture at Camoson College in Victoria as a replacement instructor; staged photography at the Victoria College of Art; history and appreciation through the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Victoria; and as a grad student, taught one drawing course in the Visual Art department at the University of Victoria. She participated in ReBOUNCE<Victoria, a Dutch-Canadian cultural exchange project in Victoria, British Columbia and Rotterdam, Holland, in 1996. She has also devoted time to teaching children’s classes in Nepean and Ottawa, Ontario, and Victoria, British Columbia, and presented as a Gallery-in-the-Schools volunteer for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

 


SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1999 A Day in the Life
Ottawa School of Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario

 

1998 daily news
Gallery 101, Ottawa, Ontario

 

1996 InterView
Open Space, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1995 Projected
TRUCK: An Artist Run Centre, Calgary, Alberta

Send in the Clowns: Acts 1-4
Floating Gallery Centre for Photography, Winnipeg, Manitoba

 

1994 5 Fraserwood Ave., Apt. #2
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario; Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton, Ontario

 

1993 Maison d'être
The Atrium Gallery, Nepean Civic Square, Nepean, Ontario

 

1992 Open-House: A Series of Installations
XChanges Gallery, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1991 Domestic Room
McPherson Library Gallery, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1990 Recent Work
McPherson Library Gallery, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1997 PROOF 4
Gallery 44, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, Ontario

Four Cubed
Hotel New York, Rotterdam, Netherlands

 

1996 Genesis III
Victoria Eaton Centre Fourth Floor Galleries, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1995 Reconfiguring Cultural Identity
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1994 In-difference
XChanges Gallery, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1993 Artropolis 93: Public Art and Art about Public Issues
The Woodward's Building, Vancouver, British Columbia

Out of Context
XChanges Gallery, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1992 Opening of the New Faculty of Fine Arts Building
University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

 

1990 Four Artists' Recent Work
Kingston Public Library, Kingston, Ontario

"A Group of Women Artists" Collaborative Piece
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

 

1989 La Salle Mews, Kingston, Ontario

 


COLLECTIONS

Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, Ontario
Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Jan. 5 Fraserwood Ave., Apt. #2. Kingston, Ontario: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, 1994.

Artropolis 93: Public Art and Art about Public Issues. Vancouver, British Columbia: A.T. Eight Artropolis Society, 1993.

Clintberg, Shane, et al. Proof 4. Toronto, Ontario: Gallery 44, 1997.

Gordaneer, Alisa. "Sitting uneasily: There's a war in your living-room." Monday Magazine 22, no. 2 (4 January 1996): n.p.

Jones, Donna. "Cheryl Pagurek. Send in the Clowns: Acts 1-4, March 2-30, 1995." Photophile (January 1995): n.p.

 

 

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