Happy to say that the video work I did in collaboration with Deborah Carruthers – Slippages & Panelled/Slippages – is in a Group Exhibition at Zygote Gallery in Cleveland OH. Capturing the Aura of the Already Said, curated by Margaret Hart, is on exhibition until April 26th.
An Excerpt of the performance video with synched audio below:
And Panelled/Slippages, full length with audio:
I thought the beginning of this year was going to be relatively quiet – a time just to hunker down & work in the studio through the cold months.
There’s certainly been a good bit of that – preparations for an exhibition in the Fall – but then a lovely opportunity came up …
I am very excited to share that Scott Smallwood and I have bene invited to exhibit some of our collaborative work at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Macromareal (redux) will be shown in ~Diffuser Gallery at ECUAD from February 26 – March 24 inclusive.
We will be heading out to Vancouver on Sunday to begin installing the work, and will also be speaking to some of the EUCAD classes about the project and our respective practices.
Looking forward immensely to this little get-away, and to the opportunity to share this work from the East Coast with a West Coast audience!
If you are in the Vancouver area, I hope you can stop in and see it – would love to hear your thoughts.
Here’s a great little interview with Jonathan Girard and Deborah Carruthers about Slippages,and some of the thinking behind the work! Getting very very excited to see this all come together tomorrow. Enjoy!
I’m in Vancouver now, and working on the last edits for the video work I am creating to accompany the world premiere of Slippages on October 5th.
I am delighted to share UBC Orchestra Director Jonathan Girard‘s take on what we are doing:
“Deborah’s gorgeous score presents a thrilling challenge. How do we, as musicians, interpret visual art?” explained Girard.
“We want the music to speak to the cool beauty of the work, but also the ideas behind it: of flux, of change, of loss. Just as the natural world has a life of its own, a kind of agency apart from human influence, we want the music, through improvisation, to have a life of its own that goes above and beyond the performers.”
For those of you not able to attend in person – the performance will be LIVE STREAMED – so I hope you have a chance to check it out!!
Getting very excited …
There’s one more week to see Archived Land – Terrain Archivé at Jackson Power Gallery in Edmonton.
The show closes 5pm September 29th. Gallery hours are by appointment (780-499-7635) during the week, and Noon – 5 pm on Saturday.
For those of you who can’t make it in person, here’s a short video walk-through of my installation, MAKE=BELIEVE. Hope you enjoy it. (turn ON your sound!)
Had a lovely time at the Opening Reception for Archived Terrain – Terrain Archivé this past Friday night.
A HUGE Thank You to everyone that came out on a busy evening, with less than ideal weather!
We all had a busy night; lots of lovely conversations, and thoughtful comments. The best way to launch new work into the world.
I was also really happy that the lovely humans that have supported this project from the outset – and on whose land the original living installation sits – were able to attend and see this first foray into taking the MAKE=BELIEVE project into a different context! looking forward to lots of chats and feedback from them on this exhibition!
For those of you who weren’t able to be there last Friday: Archived Terrain – Terrain Archivé is up until 5pm September 29th. Regular hours are NOON – 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays – other times by appointment.
I will be gallery sitting on Sunday, September 23rd, NOON – 5pm, if you want to visit!
Some images of my installation/room below:
I am very happy to say that I will be presenting some brand-new work in a group show coming up very soon!
Details below – I look forward to seeing anyone in the area who cam make it to the Opening Reception.
Exhibition hours after the Opening are listed in the invitation, or by appointment.
Some information about the exhibition:
ARCHIVED LAND : TERRAIN ARCHIVÉ at Jackson Power Gallery, Edmonton September 15 to 29
2ndfl, 9744 60 Ave, Edmonton, AB
Opening reception 7pm, September 14, 2018
Exhibit hours: Noon to 5pm
Saturdays and Sundays, September 15 to 29
Or by appointment: 780-499-7635
Jackson Power Gallery presents Archived Land : Terrain Archivé, the final exhibit before the gallery closes its doors.
Land holds memory: layered, fragmented, buried, or strongly etched. It represents identity and connection to our own history and to those who came before us; a narrative landscape that intersects human experience and the natural world.
The gallery’s layout of separate but interconnected rooms forms an environment for individual artist’s interpretation of the theme, providing the visitor with the perception of movement through time and place.
Exhibiting artists:
BELLE//MONDO
Une initiative par collaborateurs/a collaborative initiative by:
Patrick Arès-Pilon & Conor McNally
BELLE//MONDO vous invite à rentrer dans un assemblage de photographie tirée de vrai pellicule diapo Ektachrome datant de 1997. Cette oeuvre place un regard sur les environnements naturels et bâtis captée sur le territoire du traité numéro 6 incluant à Edmonton, Spruce Grove et La Sapinière en 2018.
BELLE//MONDO welcomes you to enter an immersive photography installation using vintage 35mm Ektachrome slide film (frozen since 1997). This collaborative work features layered sights of natural and built environments captured on Treaty 6 land in and around Edmonton, Spruce Grove & La Sapinière in 2018.
Paddy Lamb
Paddy considers himself to be a Canadian, Irish, Ulster Scots, Quaker, Huguenot, Celtic, Proto-Indo-European citizen of the world. His painting, drawing, and installation work acknowledges the role of landscape as a repository for our history, culture and collective memory, exploring the imprint of society on nature and how we form deep and lasting attachments to the land. His work is also a form of self-examination – a search for alternatives that continue to define his ‘sense of place’.
Sydney Lancaster
Sydney’s multidisciplinary practice explores the complicated position the individual inhabits in relation to ideas of place, land & ownership, and the ways in which both people and spaces are ‘written upon’ by larger social-political-cultural narratives over time. She is interested in the realities exposed by branches that only bend so far and how newer growth offers much more flexibility, but less strength for supporting weight.
Ultimately, her work is about how we understand and make sense of the land and the space between us.
Marlena Wyman
As a long-time archivist and now Edmonton’s Historian Laureate, Marlena Wyman’s art practice is informed by history, and her rural Alberta upbringing provides her with a deep connection to land.
We interpret our memories and identities in part through traces of past lives, whether of our ancestors or others. A haunting photograph or a handwritten passage in the diary or a letter of a long dead stranger can create a profound personal connection.
… and Chaotic Bodies will close at Spazio Performativo.
Amazing how fast the month has gone by – I’ve been too buried in the never-ending-cold-that-should-be-spring here to actually grasp that time is really passing quite quickly, and we are over 1/4 of the way through the year.
It has been a great experience re-working this project for static exhibition – being able to look at it again with fresh eyes, dig back into the ideas simmering inside it – and see what potential there was in the conversations between media.
My sincere thanks to Mile Zero Dance for the opportunity to show this work!! And my thanks to everyone involved in the RUCKUS dance project for allowing me to develop this project further, and to use the footage from rehearsals and performance in the video work!
SO: if you want to check out Chaotic Bodies before it disappears into storage again, you have until SUNDAY April 8th. I am striking the show on Monday!
If you have the opportunity, see the work both in the daytime and at night: I have a video work rear-projected in the window that is best seen after dark, and the installation and drawings are available for viewing during opening hours daytime at Mile Zero, and of course in advance of evening events.
If you get over there – drop me a line and let me know your thoughts! I’d like to hear from you.
I am excited to be presenting a dance-infused project in Mile Zero Dance’s Spazio Gallery!
The multi-media installation Chaotic Bodies will be on view in the window gallery until April 8th, so stop by Mile Zero Dance and have a look. (after dark the work takes on a new life!)
If you are in the area, please join us for the Opening Reception for this work at Mile Zero’s Spazio Performativo on Thursday March 8, from 6:30 – 8:00pm, and stay for Dirt Buffet Cabaret, curated by Liam Cody.
Chaotic Bodies is a series of works derived from photographic and video documentation of RUCKUS, a work-in-progress choreographed by Anastasia Maywood, Krista Posnyiuk, and Alison Kause. My goal with Chaotic Bodies is to explore the visual echoes of my engagement with the dancers and the choreography, with their bodies in space, and their responses through movement to the sculptural work I created.
I would like to extend my deep thanks to Anastasia Maywood, Krista Posnyiuk, Alison Kause, Ainsley Hillyard, Kate Stashko, & Alida Kendell for welcoming me into their work on RUCKUS (past & future), and for their generous an insightful feedback as I worked with them to make the ideas specific to their creative process tangible. I am grateful also for their permission to use footage and stills from rehearsals and performances in the presentation of this project at Mile Zero Dance.
I am looking toward the Opening of Chaotic Bodies this Thursday at Mile Zero Dance – and not surprisingly, I am thinking a great deal about relationship, space, and how our bodies convey information.
What we communicate with gesture and movement is so vital to our understanding – to meaning-making – but also to the way and amount of space we occupy.
All this to say: one of the things I wanted to consider in the creation of Chaotic Bodies was how bodies communicate ideas of control, balance, containment, connection, release … .
And then I came across the amazing work of artist/metalsmith Jennifer Crupi.
So much food for thought here: the controlled gesture. The canonization of particular movements that render them significant, understood as physical language that conveys information through relationship to other, to space.
aluminum, steel, acrylic, laser print, vellum,
8″ x 8″ x 6″
Power Gesture is an implement that requires the user to assume the authoritative “steepled fingers” gesture. This position exudes confidence and is often used by one who has the upper hand in a situation. Psychologists believe assuming a posture or gesture will make one feel as they would if they did the gesture naturally. So for a confidence boost, Power Gesture is the implement of choice. © Jennifer Crupi
I find the language here telling too. The Power Gesture object requires the user to assume a particular position, as do all of these sculptural objects: (con)forming to set positions to send a message.
Pondering further: if we wish to convey information bodily, how do we control or contain that which we wish to remain hidden? What if we can’t? What if our actions in space and in relationship express or reflect what we see around us, rather than what we feel? Or conversely: what if we cannot help but express the uncontrollable within us?
These thoughts & questions, amongst others, have informed the work in Chaotic Bodies. I have no fixed answers – but am enjoying the journey through the questions.
