{"id":75127,"date":"2024-05-29T14:19:36","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T21:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=75127"},"modified":"2024-07-05T08:59:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T15:59:49","slug":"queering-the-past-and-the-present-the-art-of-home-by-julian-croft-and-halo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/queering-the-past-and-the-present-the-art-of-home-by-julian-croft-and-halo\/","title":{"rendered":"Queering the Past and the Present: The Art of Home by Julian Croft and HALO"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Art<\/a>

Home Is Never Dead, It Isn\u2019t Even Home opens at Mestizo Institute of Arts and Culture in Salt Lake City on June 1.<\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibition\u2019s title, Home Is Never Dead, It Isn\u2019t Even Home,<\/i> is a reference to a quote from William Faulkner\u2019s Requiem for a Nun<\/i>, which goes, \u201cthe past is never dead, it isn\u2019t even past\u201d\u2014and in this installation by SLC artists and partners Julian Croft<\/a> and HALO<\/a>, the home that is in the past very much lives on in the present. Opening at Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts on June 1, the exhibition is a split mix of the couple\u2019s respective works, but also their styles and mediums, which bleed into one another the way couples\u2019 personal items and past-acquired habits always do when living together.<\/h4>\n

\u201cThere’s elements of me that trickled into Julian’s work, there’s elements of Julian that definitely trickled into mine,\u201d says HALO. Croft not only introduced HALO to abstract painting, but helped HALO to stop painting for other people, to take on different lenses. HALO points to \u201cSunflowers,\u201d where a pouting, distressed-looking young clown-child peers out of red splotches, as an example of Croft\u2019s willingness to make work that isn\u2019t easy to take in. HALO credits a series of nudes in the collection to \u201cthe build up of Julian,\u201d and trying to capture the sweetness of their relationship while also opening themselves up to self-exploration. \u201cThere’s a little bit of a love story happening amongst the show as well, just like with me and Julian being together. That’s kind of a huge way that we even got together, was through art-making,\u201d HALO explains.<\/h4>\n

The pair have worked on a series of immersive installations as “Side Eye Sets,” where unexpected places become a portal to a queerer way of being in space. When it comes to Home Isn\u2019t<\/i>, HALO mentions how being queer in any \u201chome\u201d is \u201cyou know, obtusely queer,\u201d likely in reference to the haze of heteronormative associations that come with American conceptions of \u201chome\u201d life. Queering the home is as much to do with the pair being comfortable in their identities <\/i>in their home, as it does with simply building a home that reflects what they want to be surrounded by. Every adult goes through this at some point\u2014what do you take with you from the home of your childhood, and what do you leave behind? For HALO, it was something as American as straight marriage and apple pie: in the center of MICA, gallery chairs are gathered around \u201cGame Show,\u201d a mixed media piece where a TV is pasted over with HALO\u2019s abstract paintings.<\/h4>\n
\"Two<\/a>

Salt Lake City artists HALO, left, and Julian Croft, right, enjoy the domesticity of their exhibit, Home Is Never Dead, It Isn\u2019t Even Home<\/i>, at Mestizo Institute of Arts and Culture.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI have like, a Matilda upbringing where I just hated watching TV my whole life, but my family’s been obsessed with the television,\u201d HALO explains, sitting next to Julian on a loveseat opposite the piece, their legs draped in a throw blanket made of red, green and yellow produce bags. When a neighbor left a broken TV in the hallway in front of the pair’s apartment door, HALO described it as almost triggering, after having successfully removed TVs from their own adult life. But eventually, HALO decided \u201cto make it something that I would watch, which is like this art piece that I made\u2014reflections of my life, my daily practices, like this time that we had like this infestation of fruit flies, there’s like that little trap \u2026 a barista, the dog we got, the spider that I caught\u2026\u00a0 like all these things are just like my life, but it’s more something I’d rather be watching than a game show.\u201d<\/h4>\n

And while the television doesn\u2019t make the cut as a household object worth keeping around, the rest of HALO\u2019s work is full of easter egg-like clues to the everyday objects they do<\/i> value\u2014like the ladder installed in the gallery window, which is also a piece of adaptive furniture in the pair\u2019s home, used as a Christmas tree at Christmas. The way HALO seems to treasure some simple home-bound objects locks in with Croft\u2019s half of the work, which looks backwards at other kinds of \u201cordinary\u201d fixtures of the home, including people.<\/h4>\n
\"A<\/a>

Works by HALO, from top left: “Shoot Your Shot,” “Scrub Mommy” and “God is in the Grind”<\/p><\/div>\n

\"A<\/a>

Julian Croft, “Your Grandfather as Liminal Space”<\/p><\/div>\n

Croft\u2019s diverse range of paintings references real images from their childhood, \u201cdealing with the home and family that you come from.\u201d The paintings are colorful and abstract, sometimes with a ghostly face peering out, sometimes coalescing into defined form. One of the most striking pieces is the painting where a depiction of Croft\u2019s grandfather finds him blending almost too perfectly into the vintage patina of a living room, like furniture himself. \u201cThe title of that one is ‘Your Grandfather as Liminal Space,’ which I feel is exactly what I’m trying to say with all of these\u2014like people as liminal space, people as this kind of in-between stage,\u201d Croft explains. \u201cI wanted people to be able to project feelings and emotions and their own families onto these people in these spaces. I really wanted it to be something that you could see yourself in.\u201d The paintings themselves are done on found or second-hand canvases\u2014new work painted over old.<\/h4>\n

In HALO\u2019s large nude painting, \u201cOde to the Ofuro,\u201d HALO and Croft are bright spots sharing a bath in a yawningly dark room. \u201cWhen we talk about being in the home and getting to do things the queer way, or \u2018my way now,\u2019 getting that reclamation, it’s a huge moment for me to, like, share a bath,\u201d HALO says. Looked at together, Croft\u2019s configurations of homes past are like shadows hanging docilely behind HALO\u2019s depictions of an amended present, the couple\u2019s shared and consciously-cultivated domesticity.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

HALO, “Ode to the Ofuro,”<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Home Isn\u2019t Dead, It Isn\u2019t Even Home<\/i>, Mestizo Institute of Culture and Art<\/a>, Salt Lake City, June 1 – July 6.\u00a0 Opening reception, Saturday, June 1, 6-10 pm.<\/p>\n

All images courtesy the author<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The exhibition\u2019s title, Home Is Never Dead, It Isn\u2019t Even Home, is a reference to a quote from William Faulkner\u2019s Requiem for a Nun, which goes, \u201cthe past is never dead, it isn\u2019t even past\u201d\u2014and in this installation by SLC artists and partners Julian Croft and HALO, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1730,"featured_media":75136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[4571,4572],"class_list":["post-75127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-halo","tag-julian-croft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Screenshot-2024-05-30-at-3.31.19-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 18:34:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1730"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75127"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83255,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75127\/revisions\/83255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}