Messenger
Liz Magor
October 16, 1996 – April 15, 1997
Liz Magor, Messenger, 1996; log cabin, trees, bushes, flagstone, mixed media; Cabin with porch, 12' W x 17' L
Artist Statement
A log cabin is a perfect system. The clearing of the site and the delivery of material are simultaneous as the forest makes, and makes way for the house. A cabin can be constructed single-handed if it need be, its basic form eschewing the need for mills, markets and other people. As an image, it provides us with the prototypical North American home in its declaration of self-sufficiency, personal sovereignty and solitude. As an object, the neat stacking of one log upon the other presents a graph which records the mounting independence of the builder. A measure of distance from people and systems.
For the pioneer, distance from people was not the priority. The early cabin was the rudimentary unit of a growing settlement, managing a notion of personal freedom within a structure of community. On the frontier, people were comfort; the cluster of huts forming a bulwark against the wilderness. The frontier has shifted. Today's cabin drives in reverse, pulling away from the town. Here we position people as the threat and isolation as the solace.
Maybe our city neighbours have exceeded the simple nuisance they once were, escalating into dangerous forms of fauna. Perhaps the daily grind has beaten us down and we search, exhausted, for a hide-out. Whatever the cause, introversion seeks its form; and the cabin waits. A shelter, a shield, a shell. A carapace with its soft centre. A place for retreat. A full redoubt.
