Ornament & Crime

"Ornament & Crime" celebrates adorned, decorated, patterned and ornamented excess.

46 artists from across Canada are featured in this hyperbolic spectacle of exaggerated adornment with all the delightful trimmings they can muster.

Ornament and Crime is an essay written in 1908 by Adolf Loos, an Austrian architect active in the early 1900s in Vienna, whose fierce opinions about ornamentation influenced the work of architects, designers and makers of his era as well as the development of Modernism. He believed that ornamentation on objects and buildings belied degenerate criminal tendencies. In the context of a contemporary perspective, his essay, full of opinions and assertions, is absurd, melodramatic and offensive, offering our artists a prompt with many points of departure for the expressive works in this exhibition.

Features many AUArts alumni and community members including Phillip Bandura (MFA ’22, Craft Media), Amy Gogarty (Diploma ’80, Painting), Eveline Kolijn (BFA ’08, Print Media), Mireille Perron (Professor Emeritus ‘18), Danielle Piper (BFA ’20, Drawing), Brielle Reeves (BFA ’21, Jewellery and Metals), Kaleb Romano (BFA ’16, Ceramics). See full list.

Jennifer Salahub (Professor Emeritus) gives an excellent talk about Adolf Loos’ article on which the exhibition is based.