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SOLD. Jonathan Hobin ‘In The Playroom’ Photograph, 2009

Jonathan Hobin ‘In The Playroom: Seal Heart’, Signed Limited Edition Color Photograph, Private Collection, The Riviera, Ottawa, Canada

LARGE EDITION (Framed):
42” x 59”
PRINT MEDIA: Chromogenic Print
Jonathan Hobin – 
Private Collection, Riviera, Ottawa, Canada
 
In the Playroom is a metaphor for the impossibility of a protective space safe from the reach of modern media. The quizzical disposition of youth and the pervasive nature of the media are symbolically represented in my images through tableau-vivant re-enactments of the very current events that adults might wish to keep out of their child’s world. Just as children make a game of pretending to be adults as a way to prepare and ultimately take on these roles in later life, so too do they explore things that they hear or see, whether or not they completely understand the magnitude of the event or the implications of their play.
 
Jonathan Hobin, Seal Heart, from the series In the Playroom, 2010

 

PRESS:

‘The kids are not all right’

A photo exhibit in Ottawa portrays children in troubling tableaux taken from news headlines
JOANNE LATIMER
 
“My son calls it the House of Horrors,” laughs Jane Steinberg, 57, an Ottawa trademark lawyer who has four photos from artist Jonathan Hobin’s Mother Goose series displayed up her staircase, where everyone can see them. “Some people stop climbing the stairs to scrutinize every detail, while others go upstairs and don’t say a single word. It surprises me they can pass by without comment.” Maybe they’re stunned by the blood splatter. Hobin’s Mother Goose is a macabre interpretation: Jumping Joan in a straightjacket; Jeremiah Obadiah leaning against a bloody sink; Polly Flinders with whip marks across her back. The photographer’s models in those photos, children of family friends, have deadpan expressions that range from defiance to apathy.

The children who appear in his new series, In The Playroom, are a combination of professional child models who worked for free (to gain experience) or again, they’re children of family friends. “People accused me of putting those kids through hell and asked if they could sleep at night,” recalled Hobin, 30, who is now preparing to show In The Playroom at Ottawa’s Dale Smith Gallery (Sept. 17- Oct. 10). “But the kids loved it. They had a blast!” Hobin’s new work leaves behind childhood fables and moves into the headlines. His topics are historic moments—mostly tragedies—immortalized and saturated by media coverage. Goodbye Mother Goose.

 

“News stories have become our modern fairy tales, our cautionary tales, and the Internet is today’s story book,” explained Hobin, who went to high school in Ottawa before moving to Toronto for eight years. He also works in film as a production designer, dividing his time between Toronto and Ottawa. “Parents think they have to protect kids from everything, but they can’t shield them completely from the media.” The Playroom series features five editions each of 12 bright photos. (They sell for approximately $1,200, framed.) The kids are arranged in staged tableaux, depicting oblique representations of subjects like the December 2004 tsunami, Lady Di’s death, 9/11, the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

Then there’s the Canadian reference: Governor General Michaëlle Jean eating a seal’s heart. “It was a tragic and beautiful moment when Michaëlle Jean ate that seal,” said Hobin, who credits his friend (and Maclean’scolumnist) Mitchel Raphael for suggesting he do a CanCon photo. “I love the seal hunt story because it’s so complicated and misunderstood.”

If the exhibit causes controversy, it won’t be the first time art of a political nature has created a stir in Ottawa. In 1991, Montreal artist Jana Sterbak’s Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorexic (the “meat dress,” which consisted of $300 worth of raw steak) outraged politicians and food-bank operators when it was shown at the National Gallery. A June 2003 exhibit at Ottawa’s SAW Gallery that displayed excrement got a similarly hostile reaction (before the show had even opened). Still, Hobin’s exhibit, while it may raise hackles, will probably not approach the outrage generated in the United States by the infamous 1989 display of Piss Christ (the infamous Andres Serrano photo depicting a crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine).

“We knew there’d be controversy because the images are so arresting,” said Ottawa-based Amanda Etherington, whose five-year-old son Caleb appears in Seal Heart. “We’ve had comments from people who question our decision. They ask, ‘How will you feel one day when [he] looks back at it?’ I just smile. Caleb had a great time.”

 

MORE:

‘In the Playroom’ is photo-based artist, Jonathan Hobin’s ongoing series of large-scale, colour photographs that depict children re-enacting significant world events such as the attack on the World Trade Center, the murder of child beauty-queen JonBenét Ramsey, and the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The series comments on the impossibility of maintaining a space for children that is protected from the reach of modern media. The quizzical disposition of youth and the pervasiveness of the news are represented in these tableau-vivant re-enactments of the traumas that a parent might wish to keep separate from their child’s world. Just as children make a game of pretending to be adults as a way to feel prepared for these roles later in life, so too do they explore the difficult information that they hear or see through role-play. Whether or not children completely understand the magnitude of an event such as 9/11, or the implications of their play, their willingness to confront catastrophe, as imagined by Hobin, critiques cultural assumptions about the innocence of childhood. The Gladstone Hotel’s iteration of In the Playroom will include several new works in this polarizing series.

 

SEE CATALOGUE:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60145c5e3d9cc7069c633320/t/609585416276627a4e2299e0/1620411724532/In_the_Playroom_Catalogue.pdf

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