Student, alumni artists re-define ‘archive’ with Science Centre exhibition
Alumna Adrienne Batke with her piece on mourning, part of The Archive and Everyday Life, on now at the Ontario Science Centre's !dea Gallery.
A group of McMaster artists is proving that an “archive” can be much more than a dust-covered box found in the basement of a museum.
The Archive and Everyday Life, curated by English and Cultural Studies professor Mary O’Connor, opened at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto on March 7.
The exhibition stems from student work produced over five years in a graduate studies course of the same name.
Students were asked to create an archive using objects and experiences in their everyday lives, and then to critically reflect on the process.
Their works are meant to be experiments that expose aspects of everyday life that may go unnoticed.
Alumna Adrienne Batke’s installation maps her two-year period of mourning following her mother’s death.
It includes photographs of the mundane items she left behind, including a yoga mat, makeup and nail polish.
“Through them I reclaim melancholia as part of mourning — a necessarily endless process of ‘living with’ grief through our encounter with everyday objects,” says Batke. 
Devon Mordell’s work, called ETHR FM, is a collection of radios combined with a ghost story.
The exhibition runs until May 24 in the Science Centre’s !dea Gallery, a space for young and emerging artists and researchers to display innovative projects that blur traditional boundaries between art, science, design and technology.
