Papai Contemporary is pleased to present Slightly Off Centre, a solo exhibition by Canadian-born and Oslo-based artist Mathew Lacosse (b. 1990) opening on Saturday, August 16. The show reflects on Lacosse’s childhood experience of growing up in a home that doubled as an art gallery run by his parents, both artists — a full circle back to the context of Papai itself.

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Text by Mathew.

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When I was a child around 9 my parents moved from Alberta, Canada and my mother’s corporate job, back to Manitoba where they were both from to start the gallery and framing shop Mark Makers in the town of Gimli. We lived in the house attached to the gallery. Their decision was practical, my mother wanted to be closer to her children and to reduce the cost and risk of selling my father’s art, which he was then travelling to seasonal markets to sell.

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It was also romantic. My mother had an image in her head of what this meant to her to settle in a lake-side community and sell local art. She had grown up visiting Victoria Beach, an affluent cottage community on the oppositeshore of Lake Winnipeg but until moving, neither of my parents had been to Gimli and their time there would be short-lived, though Ioften return. My memories of the house and gallery are few. Perhaps this was because the house was tense or because I was looking for independence in a wash of pubescent hormones.

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Whereas my mother was invested in creating this gallery and this community, I felt compelled to see myself outside of that. I was confronted by a small-town life of boredom, conservatism edged on by hockey - fuelled violence and a constant feeling that I wasn’t enough. This is not the narrative of being too good for the small town. I wanted to fit in. I didn’t want to be the city-boy to my friend’s fathers. It was at this time that I began measuring my body and fixating on comparing myself to others.

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