Golden City Transparencies, 2006

 

GOLDEN CITY

I make a second visit to the store with my camera, and am lucky to find it open.  Walter sits in his usual place talking with Jean, who has just given him a photograph of herself as a young woman with long blond hair and a beautiful face. “All the beauty went to the inside,” she quips, and Walter answers very seriously, “I believe that.” When he offers me some beer from a can, I am secretly proud to be so quickly included. He gets up to pick a dusty glass from the wide collection on the shelf above his head. Then the three of us sit together for a while, and talk about photography, ghosts and the art of scavenging.

At home that night, I add two layers to my map of the shop. One of these has all of the objects and words spoken I can recall from that afternoon, the other what my camera has recorded inside the store.

What delights in Walter's Golden City Junk is life spread thickly on, superfluously. And yet, there is a precarious equilibrium between all the objects in the store, a precision to the beautiful disarray. 

Golden City Project, exhibited in Golden City (6 April - 19 May), Winnipeg: Plug-In Institute for Contemporary Art, 2006

Golden City Space, 2006