Outside In, 2024

Exhibition mounted at Necessary Arts Gallery in Guelph, Ontario from March 4th - 18th, 2024.

Artist Statement:
​In the past four years, Addi Lemmon has been exploring the concept of “childhood romanticism”: a term she invented to explain to professors the way she represents childhood memories of play, as they have been glossed over by idealistic nostalgia and misremembering. Since watercolour renderings and scrapbooking collage has been with her since birth, Addi uses these mediums specifically as a means to re-enter the headspace of of the creations she made as a child to make her adult work as playful and stress-free as possible. With the recent reconnection to her childhood via the teaching of art to children, her current practice now includes an exploration into mixed media collage depictions of symbols from old family photos, combined with the three-dimensional application of locally foraged materials like mushrooms, mosses, and plant matter. Outside In is a conversation between these childhood memories of play, both figurative and abstracted, to examine how colours, textures, objects, words, and environments are fragmented and misremembered over time to create the narratives that become our identities.