Welcome! Come In!

Solo Exhibition at Siskind Gallery September 2024
Welcome! Come In! is a site-specific installation in the Siskinds Gallery on the Campus of Fanshawe College by London, Ontario based artists Steve deBruyn, himself an alumnus of the Fanshawe Visual Art Program. Welcome! Come In! speaks to the politics of access to third spaces, particularly art exhibition spaces and the detriment that the loss of these spaces can have on the development, exposure and experience of art practitioners and especially emerging artists. With institutions losing focus on prioritizing these spaces, artists are losing opportunities to ply their trade and thus engage the public and their peers in an ongoing, professional basis. Increasingly, artists are forced to resort to carving out temporary spaces (so called ‘pop-ups’) or developing guerilla tactics akin to the likes of skateboarders and other urban rogues in order to display their work. These practices are validated and normalized by the consistent disappearance of dedicated spaces and become an expected norm for emerging artists. Welcome! Come In! subverts the ingrained suggestive negative imagery of barriers and street furniture to open the gallery space as a place to Come in! Sit! Relax! Enjoy lunch or a coffee break with friends and colleagues, and otherwise take advantage of the third space as it is meant to be.