Stone House Art Gallery is pleased to present its sixth exhibition of 2021, Objects of (In)Significance by Emily Yurkevicz. In her most recent body of works, Yurkevicz seeks to transcribe the idea that conscious life is temporary through the appropriation of personally significant objects and motifs. These works transform approachable materials often associated with labor and craft and invite viewers to form new relationships with them through recontextualization. Through the construction of an alternate environment created by repetition and familiarity, Yurkevicz reorients the viewer toward a heightened sense of interiority; a focus on what is wholly personal, deeply felt, and rarely seen.

To uplift a simple match or other domestic object into a monument is to remove it from its quotidian daily ritual. The memorialized object now resists deterioration and ultimately, use, through this transformation. A decorated wall of ceramic matches spans the length of the gallery, while gold-leafed plinths are throne to piles of soil on the gallery floor. A familiar looking quilt is framed and trapped by wooden bars against the wall. The gallery is quiet and contemplative. Material histories, reverberations of minimalism, and a lifelong familiarity with absence are informants to the essence of Yurkevicz’s work in Objects of (In)Significance. By drawing attention to what is often overlooked, Yurkevicz encourages viewers to question their own perspective by reconsidering the material relationships of their day to day lives. These works assert that, while personal artifacts cannot replace embodied experience or a lapse in memorial recall, their responsive nature fosters increased consciousness of the liminality of the seemingly permanent.

The spaces between the work and between the walls of the home are where life happens. In creating this work, Yurkevicz also creates the spaces between-- and crafts an intentional space for mourning of who we once were, or who we might have been. 

Objects of (in)Significance is on view by appointment only through June 2021.