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The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil: An Installation by Spring Hurlbut

The Royal Ontario Museum's (ROM) Institute of Contemporary Culture (ICC) presents The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil: An Installation by Spring Hurlbut, an assemblage which transforms the Roloff Beny Gallery into an "artist's museum within a museum". This unique new installation includes hundreds of diverse monochromatic artifacts, natural specimens, and art objects from the ROM's collections, selected and arranged by Canadian visual artist Spring Hurlbut.

Like the museum itself, this installation constitutes a "final resting place" for objects that have achieved an immortality of sorts in their conservation and classification as part of a museum's collection. In The Final Sleep, however, there is no chronology, no hierarchy, no illusion of life. All things are equal in repose. The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil is on display in the ROM's Roloff Beny Gallery from April 28 until August 12, 2001.

The exhibit is an original installation created by the artist with a special grant from the Canada Council's Millennium Arts Fund. Spring Hurlbut has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently in Paris, a project where the artist incorporated 100 metal cribs from the 19th century in a park setting. Her work is included in collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Windsor Art Gallery, and Le Départment de Seine-St-Denis, France.

Head of ICC Exhibits Elizabeth McLuhan observes, "In The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil, ROM artifacts and specimens arerendered almost incorporeal by their monochromatic setting. Disparate objectsare transformed into a singular vision which challenges our assumptions aboutmuseums and what they collect. The criterion of whiteness is rich with possibilities: artifacts of bone; objects bleached white; white fabrics altered by time; white swans and albino peacocks."

The project began in 1999, when the ICC invited Hurlbut to present a selection of her work on ritual architecture and architectural ornament for the Roloff Beny Gallery of the ROM. Instead, the artist proposed to create an original installation - The Final Sleep - to mark the new millennium, a show composed entirely of cultural artifacts and natural history specimens selected by her from among the ROM's vast and diverse holdings. Hurlbut has spent almost two years preparing this installation, which has expanded to include works from other public and private collections with monochromaticism as the unifying visual attribute.

Hurlbut notes, "These rare specimens and artifactsallow for contemplation and a sense of stillness. There is no chronology, nohierarchy. All things are equal." Among the objects ensconced in Victorian-style wooden cases are ancient Chinese oracle bones used for divining purposes in daily life, mummified Egyptian cats and gazelles carefully prepared for the afterlife, diverse fish species in antique jars no longer used for storage, and a headless gibbon skeleton.

The ROM is rare among modern museums in that its strength lies in both the arts and sciences. Although the ROM holds a collection of over five million objects, much of it was originally collected for research, and has not been seen by the public. The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil gives people a unique opportunity to view the "behind-the-scenes" material that scientific researchers take great pains to collect and preserve for study. A catalogue of the show will accompany the installation.

The Final Sleep/Le Dernier Sommeil is presented by the ROM's Institute of Contemporary Culture (ICC), a privately-funded entity within the ROM dedicated to the exploration of cultural issues in present day society, with an emphasis on contemporary Canada. Founded in 1989, it presents temporary exhibitions in the Roloff Beny Gallery that emphasize current thought in the fields of photography, design, film, the visual arts, and architecture. The ICC also organizes lectures and symposia, conducts research, and fosters the interaction of scholars, creators and the public.

The noted art collector and philanthropist Bernard Ostry is the current Chair of the ICC Board. Next, the ICC presents the exhibition Papiers à la mode, a collection of 32 costumes fabricated entirely out of paper by artists Isabelle de Borchave and Rita Brown, which is scheduled to open in October, 2001.

 

 

Issue date:
April 4, 2001

For more information:
Media Relations
Tel.: 416.586.5547
Fax: 416.586.8022
E-mail: media@rom.on.ca

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