The PUBlic Window : JET COGHALN

JET COGHLAN

Jet Coghlan multidisciplinary artist, working in Toronto. Jet’s work explores counter-narratives in an attempt to highlight the conditions of today. They examine dialectical outlooks through the juxtaposition of contemporary reality with new possibilities.

Jets PUBlic Window comprises of two sets of photographs, alternating after two weeks. These images depict a collection of empty buildings in Canada, each of these images is connected to a speculative story accessed through a QR code. The story develops under different interconnected websites.  

The viewer is invited to navigate this tangled online world and build up an individual sense of the story.  

Jet explains the setting of this dystopian world …“During the ‘Global Revolution’ of 2150, there was a movement built upon a housing crisis that began in 2020, in the middle of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The buildings presented in these photos remained empty for decades while people were cramped in shoebox high-rise apartments. Connected only to their computers or commuting to work in the industrial sectors outside of the main cities. The photographs are an example of the conditions lived under imperialism and capitalism. The automatization of labour created a landscape of empty buildings.”

This is the start of an ongoing project for Jet, using The PUBlic Window as an opportunity experiment with storytelling and the mixing of reality with a fictionalised narrative.

The PUBlic Window is used here as a portal into another world but also as a portal into suburban Canada and details an artist’s response to the pandemic.  

See our Instagram @republic_gallery for more information on Jet and The PUBlic Window.