Faculty of Art

Cross-Disciplinary Art: Life Studies

Chris Leithead

Latex Tarps: Essex

Two 8'x10' rubber latex tarps, installed in 2ft wide residential laneway.

“This work is part of Latex Tarps: an ongoing process-based series, where I create large tarpaulins made of rubber latex and metal grommets and then stage interventions of site and object using them. This installation, Latex Tarps: Firewall, stages a spatial intervention in the laneway beside my house at 127 Essex St. The two 8 ft x 10 ft latex tarps are put up to cover the brick surface of my neighbour’s house in response to existing infrastructure of the laneway. This intervention responds to its surroundings, but rather than recreating the spatial dynamics of the laneway, it alters them, reconsidering the space. Not only is the space in which the viewer is situated altered, but so is the sense of the space beyond the Latex Tarps.__________________________________Latex Tarps Series:The use of the tarpaulin as a basis of form comes from their prevalence in my surroundings and across Toronto. Here, demand is high for provisional barriers and border objects to separate unassembled material and exposed sites of reconstruction from view. Likewise, this exploration of border objects comes into practice at the time of bodily and spatial border objects in which we find ourselves in during the CoVID-19 Pandemic.”