Breaking and Entering will consider how the house might be imagined otherwise through illusions, mirrors, distortions of orientation and scale, including cutaways and hauntings of various kinds from the phantasmagoric to the cinematic. Particular attention will be paid to sensorial affect typically generated by architectural structures, renderings, models and filmic projections, which are deliberately manipulated by four Canadian artists to alter everyday notions of time and space and call into question our existing criteria for establishing reliable material and historical evidence. The point of the exhibition is to draw together recent work by Heather Benning, Wyn Geleynse, Iris Häussler and David Hoffos that interrogates the anchoring points and home truths that are usually associated with domestic dwellings.

By connecting artists who previously haven’t been shown together, the exhibition will be the catalyst for a number of events: a symposium, a film series, high school outreach visits and a book of critical essays. The symposium (February 3 & 4, 2011) will be keynoted by James Putnam, a leading curator, who organizes exhibitions for the Freud Museum in London, England. It will also feature speakers discussing the artwork and issues in the exhibition from various interdisciplinary perspectives including architecture and architectural history, craft history, literature, paracinema, film studies, art history, visual culture and museum studies.