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Image of development permit with added text 'HE KEPT ONE HAND CLENCHING HER WRIST'
Image of development permit with added text 'HIS COMPULSIVE URGE THREATENED TO ENGULF HER'
Image of development permit with added text 'THE URGENCY OF HIS HANDS SILENCES HER'
Image of development permit with added text 'HUNGER FUELED HIS OBSESSION'
Image of development permit with added text 'GASPING AS HE HAULED HER AGAINST HIM'

Kathryn Walter
Redevelopment: An Intervention
October 17-26, 1989

In this series Kathryn Walter brings the language of romance novels to the streets as a way to recontexualize the domination of city space by real estate developers. Phrases like “His compulsive urge threatened to engulf her ” and “Gasping as he hauled her against him ” are overlaid on billboards displaying city documents relating to new zoning and descriptions of real estate developments in progress.

Kathryn Walter worked and studied in Vancouver (BFA-ECCAD, 1989) and Montreal (MFA-Concordia University, 1993) and now lives in Toronto where she founded the FELT studio in 2000 as a laboratory through which she explores the material and culture of modern industrial felt through exhibitions, research, architectural commissions and a product line.

Walter’s first exhibition was at grunt gallery, and she has since exhibited her work across Canada and internationally in galleries including the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Walter has created feature wall installations for residential and commercial buildings in Canada and the US. Her project Unlimited Growth… installed in 1990 remains on the face of the building at 553-555 Hamilton Street in Vancouver (formerly the Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver).