Housing – and lack thereof – has been a key element in the work of British Columbia-based artist Tom Burrows.
In 1969 he moved to the Maplewood Mudflats in North Vancouver, constructing a cabin where he lived and worked before the place was torched. With his firsthand experience, Burrows was commissioned in 1975 by the United Nations to document international squatters' communities.
Selected pages and photographs from this project are among the works featured in the Tom Burrows exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia (on until April 12). Burrows used one of his Calcutta photos – which he labelled "In front of their hovel" – for the foundation of a powerful, haunting installation, tucked into a corner of the Belkin.
Bhopal Tar and Feather, 1986 has at its heart a photo of three children. One, a boy, sports a black bomber jacket: a found treasure, we presume, far too big for him. The chances of him ever growing into it seem remote. And yet he radiates pride. Look at my jacket, he seems to say, his no-doubt scrawny arms on his hips. The illuminated photo is framed inside a lead and bitumen reconstruction of the jacket, including the hands-on-hips stance, and adorned with angel's wings.
Suspended by a chain, the work – a homage to the victims of the 1984 Bhopal, India, toxic-gas-leak disaster – includes two lines of text: "Angels can fly because they take things light."
Marsha Lederman