page_title: Tony Urquhart
section_title: Box sculptures
hierarchical_section_title: Tony Urquhart / Box sculptures
caption_attribution_description: English: A box sculpture by Canadian artist Tony Urquhart. 2014.
context_page_description: Anthony Morse Urquhart, CM is a Canadian painter born in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
  He was recognized in the late 1950s and early 1960s as one of Canada's pioneering abstractionists, having been variously linked with the Toronto painters associated with The Isaacs Gallery and The Heart of London group that included Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe and Murray Favro.
  In 1967 with Jack Chamber and Kim Ondaatje, he helped found CAR/FAC, the artists' 'union' that first established a fee schedule for public museum and gallery exhibitions of contemporary artists.
  Since the 60's Urquhart has followed an independent and autonomous path centred upon his distinctive 'box' format.
context_section_description: In 1965 Urquhart began to make paintings on boxes, which required the viewer to move around to see the whole work. They were tiny cubes six inches high that did not open, and with landscapes painted on all sides. By 1967 some of them had grown to seven feet in height, and were essentially three-dimensional paintings.
  Urquhart's first box was exhibited in 1965, a tiny 4” x 5" construction called the Decadent Cube. As Dorothy Cameron pointed out, its opening was just a mere 'maddening' slit, but it was, nevertheless, 'the first box to directly indicate an interior.' She interpreted his later Box with Six Landscape Shards, 1970, as a metaphor for the destruction of natural landscape and as 'the philosophic core of Urquhart's art.' For Urquhart, however, three-dimensional form permitted the outward projection of his inner vision, of his imaginary landscape constructs; he insisted that 'Every object I have ever made was just naturally meant to be painted' and continues to think of himself as a landscape painter.
  In 1967 he went to Europe again. This time looking carefully at opening box-like objects: reliquaries, alter pieces, even a three-foot statue of the virgin with Christ-child on her lap, which, when opened, showed Christ on the cross. On his return he began to make opening boxes.
  Urquhart's opening-box sculptures require not just the viewer's attention, but also the viewer's participation. Unlike conventional works of art, the boxes are meant to be handled – carefully – by gallery visitors. Made primarily of wood, and using a selection of found and invented materials that evoke memories or feelings from the past, or produce a reaction in the viewer, the boxes have hinged doors that give viewers access to interiors, along with Urquhart's brightly painted exteriors.
  In Fourteen Rings, a box sculpture in the MacKenzie Art Gallery collection, Urquhart presents an opening-box with an intriguing title. What are the 14 rings? Where are they, and what do they mean? What happens if you touch them? With this exhibit, Urquhart reminds the viewer that exploring interior mysteries can be more rewarding than admiring familiar and predictable exteriors. By thinking about what's inside the box he is encouraging viewers to think outside the box.
caption: Pavillion. A box sculpture by Canadian artist Tony Urquhart. 2014.
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