Looking for a new and unique art gallery to explore? The Richmond Art Gallery has a brand new exhibition titled “a small but comfy house and maybe a dog” starting this weekend!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrJl740Bqd0/
The exhibition opens April 22th and runs until June 11th. If you’ve never been to the Richmond Art Gallery before, it’s located on Minoru Gate, near the Richmond Public Library and the Minoru pavilions. The gallery is generally viewed as an underrated attraction in the city of Richmond, but promises to offer a unique viewing experience for every visit.
So I know what you must be thinking right off the bat: what does “a small but comfy house and maybe a dog” even mean? Well, just like any other wacky or unique piece of artwork you might see online or in-person, the name behind the art usually has more meaning than you’d imagine.
The title of the exhibition actually comes from a text called “Me in the Future”, which is a story by Amy Ching-Yan Lam that she wrote when she was eleven. The story details what she thought her future would be like by the time she was twenty-five. One of the hopeful ideas Amy had was that she would have “a small but comfy house and maybe a dog”. Check out this sneak peek of the exhibition:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrOZbRtIa12/
The artworks by Amy Ching-Yan Lam explore how her dreams of her future would work within the context of “colonial history”. Various pieces around the exhibition will make the viewers have a glimpse at relationships between certain aspects of our lives such as family, property and power.
One of the coolest attractions are several models created by Amy and artist HaeAhn Woo Kwon. They remade a bunch of toys, materials and objects that might be found in a “fantasy communal home”.
The imagined dog in the title of the exhibition is presented by a true story of a dog named Looty. British troops took Looty, a “Pekingese” dog from China during the Second Opium War and has since had its story retold through an animation and a book.
(Richmond Art Gallery)
There’s much more that this exhibition has to offer, but it can only be expressed through the actual experience at the Richmond Art Gallery.
What might seem like an “unexciting trip to the art gallery” might end up being a memorable experience for you this spring. You never know what something is like until you try it!