Isolation Hotel

Heather Straka

Canterbury Museum
11 Rolleston Avenue, Christchurch
in partnership with SCAPE Public Art

27 November 2021 – 20 March 2022

Create a fantasy and tell your story on the cinematic stage of Heather Straka’s immersive new exhibition at Canterbury Museum.

A cocktail of drama, art history and cinematic vision, Isolation Hotel is a multidisciplinary work, produced in partnership with SCAPE Public Art, combining photography, performance, sound, installation and set design. Straka, an Auckland photographer, has recreated the look and feel of a 1930s German hotel foyer, once opulent and now run-down, on an elaborate stage set inside the museum.

This set forms the backdrop for a series of Straka’s photographs, which feature a diverse cast of mysterious characters seeking sanctuary in the hotel. The images recall the epic, heroic history and mythology paintings of Caravaggio, Rubens and Rembrandt, hinting at soap opera-esque backstories, secrets and dates with destiny.

The set also provides a backdrop for visitors to take their own photos and tell their own stories. Straka invites them to project their own dreams, desires, and anxieties onto her set.

Isolation Hotel hints at present-day social issues; Covid lockdowns and managed isolation, #metoo, LGBTQIA+ aesthetics and liberation, the housing shortage and contested monuments to a colonial past.

The work is a unique and enigmatic art experience that aims to give the viewer a voice and allow them to use their own subjectivity.

We need your help to continue providing a year-round programme of online reviews, interviews, portfolios, videos and listings that is free for everyone to access. We’d also like to dream bigger with the services we offer to photographers and the visual arts.
We’ve partnered with Press Patron to give readers the opportunity to support PhotoForum Online.
Every donation helps.