In Lodge, Jules Gårder, and Jen Chai Shear have created a system that forces recognition and navigation, a direct physical intervention in what is typically afforded to the viewer, collector, curator, or guest: the center.

During the later stages of preparation for this show, in a conversation, we sought a title that would complement a collaboration between numerous ideas and elements. The word “lodge” was proposed. I initially imagined something lodged, embedded, or intruding, perhaps a splinter. Marginalia, the decorative, whimsical or illuminating elements on the edges of texts, were highlighted as a source of energy this show would draw from. In fact, we were talking about the industrious and noble animal, the beaver, and the homes they build on the edges (margins) of ponds they have created. 

They are a strange creature, creative but bound by neurosis. They produce their dams for one reason: the sound of water is impermissible to them. It must be stilled. There doesn’t seem to be a better metaphor for an artist than that. A gallery, any venue filled with any creative thing, is just that: an unobstructed channel through which a person can flow in and out. In Lodge, they have been dammed, pooled, forced to circulate, contained and divided by structure and multitude.

This space, in which this is the inaugural show, is Nuisance, the adjective, and later the name given to the cat I grew up with. He was an interloper, with goals and objectives opaque to us, but clear to him. Despite beavers being widely viewed as something along those lines, whose dams must be defeated with dynamite, their ponds are generative, creating the density and stillness in which life thrives. Through collection, the many become monolithic, capable of altering the landscape. Their work is recognized, and they feature in legends, artwork, and iconography. We have bestowed upon them the honour of complexity.

In Lodge, you are asked to navigate complexity and pause in the still moments that individual moments create, to be both the marginalia and the page at the same time.