Without the benefit of witnessing the performance that motivated its becoming, Berenicci Hershorn’s HERE at Hamilton Artists Inc. is a laboratory for rooting into the notion of performance’s afterlife. A permeable architecture of plastic sheets grimly shrouds the darkened gallery in a ramshackle post-apocalyptic mood while bearing the dignity of a survivor: an archive of actions taken that lingers as an exhibition. 
Berenicci Hershorn, HERE, 2014, installation view (photo: Henry Chan)
In the absence of supervision or other gallery prohibitions (deliberate or otherwise), Hershorn’s abandoned space invites an investigatory approach to each of its separated cubicles. I was, maybe, too free to thumb through the stacks of newspapers at each station in search of a theme, and could confirm with a cautious touch that the kettle resting on a hot plate was definitely boiled. This untended heat is an enigmatic counterpoint to an aquarium holding a modest layer of unmelted ice – opposing clues running hot and cold, like the quasi-scientific emblem embroidered on used aprons waiting to be deciphered.
The actions that made use of this space are legible enough in their remnants and through the still images rotating on a small monitor at a sensible remove from the installation. Those newspapers, seemingly heavy on finance and stock market reports, were filled with a red liquid from watering cans then bundled into envelopes tied with twine, echoing Hershorn’s action in find here here for Toronto’s 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art in 2010. The stains of this process, reprised at the Inc. by Hershorn with the unprecedented accompaniment of ten choreographed performers, reveal the gesture’s quixotic edge even while their dried bundles remain defiantly intact: stacked at each tidied station as clear performance indicators of this unseen, post-recession ritual.
Hamilton Artists Inc.: http://www.theinc.ca/
Berenicci Hershorn: HERE continues until August 2.
Stephanie Vegh is a Hamilton-based visual artist and writer whose criticism has appeared in Scotland's Map Magazine, Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Hamilton Arts & Letters, in addition to her own blog. Her drawings and installations have shown most recently at the upArt Contemporary Art Fair and Nathaniel Hughson Gallery in Hamilton. She is the Executive Director of the Hamilton Arts Council and a member of the Curatorial Committee for Hamilton's annual Supercrawl. She is also Akimblog's Hamilton correspondent and can be followed @Stephanie_Vegh on Twitter.
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Berenicci Hershorn at Hamilton Artists Inc.
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