HEATHER BENNING!

I stumbled across this artist when researching for doll houses; I was fascinated by her life size ‘Dollhouse’. Benning found an old abandoned house in the middle of a Saskatchewan field, and decided to renovate the building into what would be seen as a typical dolls house. The back wall of the house was replaced with plexiglass which would give the same appearance as a dollhouse, and the interior was completely refurbished with furniture from the 1960’s. I wanted to discover why Benning chose to create this house, was it simply for the visual aspect? And is the piece site specific? I managed to find quote from her...

“We hold inside us the gathering of the places we have inhabited. Places shape our ideas and feelings; at the same time, our ideas and feelings animate places.

In my past works, I have explored issues of identity, rural displacement and/or reclamation, heritage and nostalgia. My site-specific installations rely on surrounding landscape and architecture to create a mise-en-scene for the viewer, thus making the works a multi-sensorial experience.

The goal with my practice is to make viewers question their relationship to their surroundings and their placement within these environments. However, everything changes all the time, as do I and my research...”

So there we go, I think it explains enough to me...though I still want to know more about the chosen theme and interior as appose to the surrounding landscape. I was attracted to the piece because I immediately thought it was a miniature dollhouse which had been focused in on, and when I discovered that in fact it was a life size house, I became really fascinated by the whole idea. So now I’ve got dollhouse ideas on mind constantly, I just need to focus on one!