she curates

Poems at an exhibition

2011-12-27T23:15:00.008-05:00

Here are some words I wrote to accompany the works in "Between Cellar and Attic"...I chose not to write an essay, because its form and required objectivity felt much too cold and restrictive - not at all applicable to the feeling of this show or the dreamy, nostalgic, aggressive and intangible qualities of personal relationships to space as hinted at by Genevieve Robertson, Ryan Lord and Paola Savasta's works. Very graciously, by the artists, I was indulged in my preference to write poetry, as a text-based way of opening the works up to interpretation. I wanted to give a response that was subjective, emotional, reflective of my psyche in the same ways these artists each capture complex inner worlds. Perhaps these poems worked to activate new ways of experiencing the show in the imaginations of the audience, as they offer at times campy, irrelevant, odd and humble ideas. I mean, speaking from personal experience, reading the literature that accompanies exhibitions at most institutions usually doesn't get me flipping out with sheer excitement. A particularly brilliant insight will get a giggle from me, yes. And respect, sure. I'm not trying to make the case for populist art and "dumbed-down" art writing. I am not promoting gimmicks at museums meant to tempt viewers in. But I wonder what writing about art from a deeply personal, intuitive place (ie, not the distilled intellectual language of academia, but something that rings true - more revealing, earnest, romantic... bordering on humiliating maybe?) can do for improving audience engagement, for stimulating deep reactions, for improving the public's relationship to contemporary art, for improving enjoyment, honest dialogue and criticism across the board. What can it do for breaking down silos, and opening art up to new possibilities? I wonder if I can write in such a way successfully...so this is my start. I wrote these poems while safely snuggled in my own bed, where I spend a lot of time, and manage to do many things, including working quite comfortably (definitely more so than at a desk). My bed - intimate, inspiring, and yet sometimes as stormy as the sea - is surrounded by all that I love and can't live without, located between cellar and attic, and where I absolutely feel the most at home. So, I thought, it would be appropriate to write from that place, for these artists and their show. I hope you like the poems...xoe

In the starlit place
(for Genevieve)

Wallpaper
roses layered in
clouds. Ash cloaked
suitcases kept close for
wandering. Big gentle sleepy
blankets piled up to collect some
rest. Black silk panopticon shadow
cat tethered to shifty grinned somnolent
meditation. Musty moss woven bird made
nest thieved from a mud slicked wood beam
after its inhabitants took flight to search for a home
elsewhere. Perfume absent vintage mottled lead glass
vessels sweetened by memories of once near loved ones
a milk a pink a frosted white with touch-worn patches of handpainted
flowers cramped together securely in a Bermuda Triangle of sentimental
arrangement. Induction unravelled linen bound threshold navigation guide
books gathered around me like the crumbling ruins of a stone amphitheatre
on shelves table floor bed precarious stacks stuffed with pressed leaf love letters spilling
into an unknown river’s waters that sweep buried bone words deep downstream to be sought
after gleaming in the starlit place I visit whenever there is an opportunity to take a little time to
look.

Internal monologue for Mr Olympia’s workout
(for Ryan)

Work that chest out
Work it hard
Pump it pump it pump
Incline bench press
Four times ten
Burn hot to get big bumps

Now the biceps
Incline curls
Donkey kickbacks fast
Rip, sliced, shredded
Cut extreme
Who cares about the rest

Deadlifts, pulldowns
Build that back
Rugged to the max
Say you’re unsure
Kill that noise
And get your body jacked

Don’t you try to
Hide from me
Where you gonna go?
We’re not done here
Flesh machine
Until your mass gets grown

Feeling tired, wow
Malcontent
Think that’s all you are
Cardboard body
Empty box
You’re void of any power

You’re fucking weak
Dead to me
Call yourself a man?
Just don’t you dare
Abandon me
I don’t know who I am

Rectangles of dysfunction that occupy my wall
(A semi-fictional list for Paola)

Painting of productive agricultural land sold
to industrial property developers.
Fastidiously organized to do list always
neglected to be read.
Love note on postcard of exceptionally
hideous Icelandic sunset.
Water-resistant found dog poster with high
res picture of a duck.
Counterfeit-proof train pass already
lost five times and counting.
Fortunes of prosperity from
inedible cookies.

Newspaper article on furniture shipment
sent straight to the dump.
Photo of university graduates destined
to lifetime of career insecurity, circa 2002.
Definition of some pithy zeitgeist word
no one will use in a year.
Self-portrait sketched on envelope orphaned
from proper identification papers.
Perfectly recorded full contact information
for person I will never call.
Award announcement for directional signs
designed for election nobody voted in.
“Bonne chance” stamped on metal keepsake
containing carcinogens.

Precious quote by esteemed dead intellectual
that derailed my art practice.
Coordinates of public space requiring
permits to use and patrolled by police.
Wise words from mother inadequately
recognized for her contributions.
Prescription for drugs to treat
the wrong problems.
IOUs from trusted friends with
no plans to pay back their debts.
Myspace user name and password.

Bringing a few items out of the collection...

2011-10-19T13:19:00.005-04:00

I collect constantly. Not as much art as I'd like. Mostly websites. Emails. Exhibition pamphlets. Images. Books. Birds' nests. Ideas. Part-time jobs. Everything is currently in a big pile. Well, stuff is filed away and gives the appearance of being somewhat organized. But it's all just collected together and stuck. Not properly sorted and cross-catalogued for quick reference. Not mobile enough in my mental and physical space to be shared coherently, intelligently. Maybe it is more accurate to say that I consume.

I had promised to share further references to explore ideas about "the commons". I even dared to brag that I would critique my own interpretations of the works in my latest exhibition, Meet us on the commons. Oh, it's all been collected and some notes are scratched out. It's just stuck right now. What I'm not good at collecting is the time to do all this, the fearlessness of imperfection to just put it out there. But Internet, if you're listening, just know that it is in the works. I do want to share my collection. Let it go, piece by piece. Starting with these little balloon videos I made last month, and hope to continue making as long as I keep finding balloons on my travels.

And while we're at it, here are a few other things of note that I've been meaning to share:

The Three Tongues is a free knowledge exchange project that I co-curate with the exquisite Stacey Sproule, whose performance, installation and video art has been shown at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, FADO, Forest City Gallery, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, and Xpace, amongst others. The Three Tongues revolves mainly around our blog, where you can find more information about accessing information and education for free, and skill swaps that we host in free public spaces. For these swaps, we invite three people to teach a skill they are intimately acquainted with - something they practice in everyday life - and that is fairly easily to pass on, without the need for many extra materials or equipment. One person teaches a skill related to Truth, another to Beauty, and another to Chance. After teaching a group a skill, the "students" then break off and partner up with each other, and exchange the skills they have just learned by teaching them to each other. This continues until everyone has learned all three skills. I am excited to be speaking more about this project at the Art Gallery of Windsor for Broken City Lab's Homework conference, where artists will be sharing their thoughts and experiences with infrastructure and collaboration in social practices, as they relate to education, cities and space, artist run culture and more. If you're not heading to Windsor this weekend, you can catch it all on Livestream.

Also happening now is Between Cellar and Attic at Xpace, until November 5. In this exhibition, Ryan Lord, Genevieve Robertson and Paola Savasta investigate relationships to domestic spaces and the objects contained therein. I wrote poetry to accompany the works in the show, which I'll post at a later date.

Meet us on the commons keeps on

2011-08-07T16:50:00.009-04:00

Ever feel like you're being taunted by the regulatory signs that dominate public space? Like they are daring you to challenge their authority by acting in opposition to the rules they declare? I noticed these Keep Out stencils beside the ridiculous blue non-swimming pools when I was over on the Toronto Island a few weeks ago...While I have to admit that I obeyed this teensy bit of spray paint on the ground, the attention it drew to the pool invited me to consider the possibility of going in, a thought I might not have otherwise had if the sign wasn't there. What would move you to act on such an impulse?

Until September 11, I'll be blogging about Meet us on the commons over on the Art Gallery of Mississauga's website...

Posts will include alternative perspectives on works in the show (including critiques of my previous interpretations, gasp!), musings on taking action for the public's right to public space, profiles of related artist and curatorial projects, troubleshooting public art projects and events, and responses to questions and comments from anyone that feels like speaking up.

To share your thoughts on the exhibition and participate in the discussion, email: agmcommons [at] gmail [dot] com

And as much as I can, I'll try to post updates about my other projects in the works and continue to share them here.

Until then, keep on, friends!

xoe

Meet on the commons @ The Art Gallery of Mississauga

2011-07-20T20:32:00.006-04:00

Meet us on the commons

Curated by Elizabeth Underhill

The Art Gallery of Mississauga

July 21 - September 11, 2011

Featuring new and recent works by
The Department of Unusual Certainties
Sarah Febbraro
Serena Lee in dialogue with Anna Okrasko
Derek Liddington
Nathalie Quagliotto
Sarah Sharkey Pearce and Mariangela Piccione
Stacey Sproule

Meet us on the commons is an invitation to explore the public realm and encounter the people within it, by imagining and experiencing shared gathering places over a fragmented series of built environments, natural settings, and online networks in projects that focus on the role of youth in the formation of the commons. Through performance, sculpture, video and interactive works, emerging artists document, conceptualize and mythologize the rebellious actions of young people as gestures that open up space and welcome us to consider new places for play, discovery, and belonging.

The commons, a term used to describe shared public places, often take the form of parks or city squares that serve as accessible spaces for all members of the public, yet constantly face regulations and barriers that restrict their usage. Works in this exhibition investigate alternative uses and versions of the commons by citing the agency of defiant young people to freely enjoy and create shared gathering places. As provocateurs who flout authority and resist “fitting in”, such youngsters are frequently perceived as rule-breakers and undesirable troublemakers. However, artists in Meet us on the commons propose non-normative behaviour to be a vital catalyst for the making and sustainability of the commons, and explore conflict and resistance as liberating acts that disrupt hegemonic control over the spaces we visit, transforming them into publicly-malleable heterogeneous meeting places of pluralistic use that welcome difference and dialogue.

not until after tomorrow, after the show...

2011-07-19T23:46:00.003-04:00

Sure has been awhile, hasn't it? This lonely little blog just sort of appeared and faded away... Suppose it's time to shake things up around here again. I'll just make myself comfortable first with a little Talking Heads...

This question of what happens "after the show" is rather open, don't you think? As an independent curator it crosses my mind every time I'm working on an exhibition. Inevitably I wonder, what will happen after the show closes, what becomes of all it contained, and what will I do next? Sometimes I go the super-optimistic Jay Z route and get pumped up with that fearless, "I can't be stopped cos I have the balls to follow through with all these ideas that bust loose from my own bad ass practice and challenge everything that's been done in this whole art game thing so yeah obvs I'm on to the next one and it's going to be even better than that last thing I did and totally rule your face with mindblowing awesomeness so eat that and like it" attitude (not going to lie, this tune and its implications for working in the world of contemporary art were brought up in conversation by Derek Liddington, though I'm not claiming this is how he applies it to his own practice, phrased this immodestly, nor will I suggest that he secretly raps along when no one's looking, like I do, for that matter).

Most other times, such as now when I'm on the very precipice of closing, or even opening, another show (which, is, uh, not until after tomorrow, btw) and peering into what seems like a giant chasm of unknowns, my thoughts are going in the same general direction as this narrative Spalding Gray's character in True Stories (perhaps self-deceivingly, see below) presents. He mixes up this question of "after the show" with a complex string of associated euphemisms: the edge of civilization, the end of the world, an imaginary landscape...In clumsily reductive terms, what I initially get out of this is essentially: "Yeah, things are ending, but hey, other things are beginning, too. Cool, huh?" Thinking about an exhibition’s end point as starting point is a way to see fresh possibilities for this moment in time and space. After the show - that chasm of unknowns - is like territory that's been razed by some event of apocalyptic proportions, but because of this new life is able to proliferate. It's a great metaphor, and even though I'm not exactly prepared to talk about zombies right now just let me say that it weren’t for no reason I named my cat Phoenix, fyi. Rising from the ashes. Life coming out of death. Transformation. David Altmejd being my favourite...Yes, you have to move onwards if there's going to be a "next one".. And yet..

I kind of want to use the critical implications of this video as framework to briefly venture into thinking about exhibition making in the same terms as the failed suburban dream. If we take the exhibition (before, during, after) as a place of potential, the unknown, the space created to dream and conceptualize, does this implicate it as being an alienated, anti-social space, uncaring and cut off from active participation in the world? Can we even go so far as thinking of exhibition as a form of delusion?

Okay, whoa! You know what? I'm not ready to go there. That's a rather cynical, ungenerous perspective, and does a huge disservice to the work of arts practitioners and audiences' engagement with art, so I'm going to leave that route alone for the time being! I love art. I can't live without it. The closest comparison I can draw to seeing art at a good museum or artist's studio is like lying on a beach at night near a quiet lake and witnessing the entire galaxy sparkling above you. It's a fucking beautiful thing. You feel elevated and crushed at the same time, knowing you're part of a brilliant universe and yet realizing you really don't have the ability to fully fathom where the hell you are at all. Being here transports you somewhere else. Not much else out there that provides experiences like that. So instead I'll argue from the other direction, countering with the idea of exhibition indeed as dwelling place, yet prone to spontaneous transversal excursions that support and/or stimulate new, unexpected yet relational thoughts and experiences. ie, check the rockin' group of random kids a'singing and a'dancing in the as-yet-undeveloped field. It’s someplace where you can be free to play, to dream, to dissent... You might want to bring a goat, too.

Alright, yes, so, as I have alluded, I do have a new show coming up very soon. Called Meet us on the commons. Happening at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Runs July 21-September 11. Very excited for it, very grateful for the opportunity and having the chance to show lots of really beautiful, challenging works by artists I have a great deal of love and respect for. Will dedicate another post to it shortly.

I’ll wrap up by saying that this blog will remain active as place for me to present my projects and continue to explore them even after they have reached some institutional standard of finitude. The idea of "after the show" makes me uncomfortable. Being so intensely close to a project for so long, I'm reluctant to totally let go of it. Recently awakening to the fact that Meet us on the commons will eventually end, I strangely began to grieve the loss of the exhibition. It hasn’t even opened yet, and already I worry, after the show, what remains? I'm not just going to stop thinking about it entirely. The essay is published but it doesn’t go into the level of depth I’m happy with. So what if I want to dwell on it for a bit longer? Stay in that imaginary landscape? What do I do if there are perspectives, works, ephemera, fragments of visual culture, etc, that I discover later on that are relevant to it? Experiences that evoke and deepen the beauty and insight the artworks hold? Blah blah blog about it! For now, anyway. We’ll see what happens next. Until then…

Love to the universe

xoe

WhiteFeather: My Pretties

2009-05-02T20:38:00.007-04:00

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe...

There is a slipperiness to this poetic line from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. Floating loosely between the recognizable and the otherworldly, it is adrift in a chimeric space: a location paradoxically evocative of the sparkly and bright along with the dark and murky, where attempts to reconcile light and shadow into meaning collapse. Like Carroll’s slippery words, the dolls of textile artist WhiteFeather inhabit the realm of chimeras that spans the puzzling threshold between the real and imagined, vacillating from the charming to the ominous. Though they are woven together from recognizable found organic and manufactured objects, WhiteFeather’s dolls prompt us to grapple with an irreconcilable space.

My Pretties is an installation of three of WhiteFeather’s chimeric dolls, Tattie Bogle, Bambin and Poppin. Visibly knotted together with twine and sealed with beeswax, they are strange looking creatures made up of hair, animal fur, feathers, bone - amongst other remnants of the living - and manufactured materials like synthetic gloves and funerary flowers. The transient nature of their organic components dictates a certain lifespan; decay is an inherent part of their existence.

Out of decay comes life, and well representative of this is the scarecrow, to which WhiteFeather’s dolls bear resemblance and are sometimes named for. Used to scare away hungry pests in an idealized hope to protect crops from destruction, scarecrows are made by revitalizing cast away objects; in use and makeup, scarecrows conflate the disposable with the vital. That they should be regarded as folkloric speaks to contemporary attitudes toward the real feasibility of harmony between what is apparently disparate, in particular wilderness and humanity.

Indeed, WhiteFeather’s chimeric dolls give us the impression of distinct realms attempting to merge in their woven appearance with seams undisguised. My Pretties alludes to the “unknown”: a seamless union between the world we know and an otherworldly place that is mysterious to us, which remains relegated to the imaginary. The eeriness of these dolls reveals a sense of awe we feel when faced with this merger, and beg the question: how would we react if these seemingly separate realms were to fully reconcile in reality? My Pretties, with their revitalizing collision of different elements, open up consideration for new possibilities in the world around us.

WhiteFeather: My Pretties, was on view at the Window Box Gallery, 1313 Queen Street West, from 4- 29 March, 2009.

David Ross Harper: Watching, by Nature

2009-03-05T22:04:00.005-05:00

David Ross Harper continues his interest in the metonymy of the interior in his new work, Watching, by Nature, which explores the inclusion of animal ornaments in domestic spaces using portraiture, taxidermy and embroidery. Substitution of domestic objects with animal parts and vice versa is an ongoing concern in Harper’s practice, and here considers the merging of absence and presence.

In Watching, a digital reproduction of an antique sepia portrait photograph has been printed onto canvas, which is layered further with an embroidery of a mirrored-owl onto the anonymous portrait-sitter’s face. Tucked behind its frame is another antique relic: a small taxidermy owl peers out, openly gazing at its viewers, while abruptly interrupting the frame’s mount on the wall.

Portraits are visual records of lives lived, but fail as simulacra for their subjects. Similarly, the inclusion of animal ornaments in domestic spheres describe an attempt to replace a missed connection to nature with objects. In defining our own lives, such objects serve as reminders of an identity we envision. Representations of lives passed and our desire for a connection to the outside world mirror one another in physicalizing that which is absent.

This mirror’s tenuous reflection of the crafted other in ourselves is underscored by its representation in embroidery for Watching. In his use of needlework, Harper conflates the practice of pinning specimens for preservation with the stitches’ delicate use in decoration and embellishment. To witness the presence of another in our homes hinges on a ritualized process of bringing them forth that combines permanence with the ephemeral. The act of embroidering, an incredibly repetitive and refined exercise, brings history to the present, while also representing the performative, physical process that must occur in the absent other’s place.

Filling a void, the space between ourselves and the reflected image we desire, at times takes shape as the glass of a mirror, a seam that links disparate realms and contains the merger of absence and presence. Here, the puncture of the canvas by the needle creates a surface analogous to the glass, formed through permeation and now impregnated by thread. Writing on the subject of friendship, Michel de Montaigne declared that though he and his friend remained separate individuals, they were also invisibly linked as “souls [...] mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found.” In attempts to link to realms beyond our own, and depict companionship between ourselves and animals, we still leave a physical trace, a scar of sorts, that attests to the imperfection of metonymy and the clogging that occurs, rather than altruistic osmosis. Watching, by Nature suggests our desire to join with nature, as if to replace something we lack as humans, is hanging together by mere thread.

David Ross Harper: Watching, by Nature, was on view at the Window Box Gallery, 1313 Queen Street West, from 7 January - 1 March, 2009.

Mis[place]d @ Xpace

2009-02-19T23:05:00.010-05:00

Detail of The Great Auks by Tania Sanhueza

Main gallery
Views of a Secret by Samuel Choisy
Shooting the Mass Murder by Christina Knox
Red Fox, Green Weasel and Sniffing Boar by Ashley Andrews
Detail of Crocodile Tears (Crying Cat) by Laura Paolini
More Main Gallery
Installation by Valerie Sabaliauskas
Detail of How I Lost My Virginity by Ian MacTilstra
Detail of The Summons Series by Colleen Collins
The Great Auks by Tania Sanhueza
XBase with Legends of Chincoteague by Aidan Dahlin Nolan, Kelsey and Meghan Speakman
Farewell to Beasts by Renee Nault
I don't mind the sight of you and Yeti by Hannah Myall
The Plagues by Stephanie Vegh
Detail of The Plagues by Stephanie Vegh
Making Bunnies by Stephanie Kervin and Sylvana D'Angelo

Photographs by Samuel Choisy, Elizabeth Underhill, and Casey Wong.

Mis[place]d was on view at Xpace from January 9-31 2009. For more information contact misplacedshow@gmail.com

This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

2009-02-15T13:24:00.005-05:00

“In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.” - Edward O. Wilson

Humanity is at a critical point in its history: we have actually stopped to consider how much we have destroyed and whether we will continue to do so. We are responsible for the world’s sixth wave of mass extinction:1 wild animals are dying in irretrievable numbers from habitat destruction and fragmentation,2 environmental stressors,3 and extermination by those who consider them pests or desirable commodities,4 while domestic animals are being produced and consumed at a ridiculous rate.5 Mis[place]d: Animals Lost and Found features thirteen projects by emerging artists concerned with our damaging relationship with wildlife and companion animals. To be misplaced is to be accidentally lost from a place of belonging. This exhibition suggests that the notion of incorrect positioning may be applied to animals, as well as the pervading attitude that we possess them. The works in Mis[place]d act as sites of inquiry, places where new ways of thinking about animals can be found where misplaced attitudes have brought about loss.

Familiar Faces
“When the world crashes in to my living room/Television made me what I am” - Talking Heads

Exerting cultural and biological stressors onto animals to get them to fit into human societal structures is the basis of domestication, although recent practitioners have been accused of endangering animal and human welfare in so doing.6 While these creatures, such as pets, seem an intrinsic part of our lives and happiness, the process of domestication simultaneously situates them as “objects of ownership, inheritance, purchase, and exchange.”7 By defamiliarizing the animals we consider closest to us, works by Laura Paolini and Ian MacTilstra remark on losing pets within our homes.

Laura Paolini’s Crocodile Tears (Crying Cat) situates a pet in its “natural habitat:” a seat in front of the television. A robotic cat watches a video of a real cat playing to the tune of What a Wonderful World. The robot cries constantly, suggesting that what it sees brings about feelings of sadness. Our dominance of the animal world is reflected by our desire to achieve within it aesthetic beauty, breeding animals that aren’t really animals anymore, but rather pretty objects, continuously ascribed with human qualities and emotions. Also evident is a critique of art historical concerns with the power of beauty to achieve the sublime: the cat is gorgeous, but as fake as its tears, and deeply rooted in materiality.

Ian MacTilstra’s digitized super-8 video How I Lost My Virginity shows a time-elapsed day in the life of a dog. The dog is captured sleeping on a couch, rarely getting up to move, and we hear its restless moans. This idle dog is one we’re not unaccustomed to: the pet that spends its life sleeping. However, as time passes and the dog’s moans become more insistent, this common scene becomes repulsive and disconcerting. Dogs are known as "man’s best friend," revered for their heroic loyalty. But this is a hero devoid of glory. As with losing virgin purity, something sacred has been stripped away from this animal.

Pest Problems
“Check what’s in the trash bag/We’re just another part of you” - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

“Pest” is a diminutive of pestilent, the word indicative of something deadly, yet the pesky creatures we fear and are disgusted by resemble us closely in terms of physiognomy, behaviour, and intelligence. The destruction of the world’s resources is suicide, perhaps paralleled most poignantly in the way we treat pests. Works by Stephanie Vegh, Stephanie Kervin and Sylvana D’Angelo, and Christina Knox examine the problems with pests.

The Plagues by Stephanie Vegh confronts our fear of rats in relation to their overwhelming pervasiveness of civic spaces and poor reputation as bearers of fatal disease. Spreading out from a stoney basement corner are rats drawn onto 71 pages of Rome and the Campagna, a Victorian treatise glorifying ancient architecture. Vegh’s interventionist illustrations emphasize the incongruity between the text’s claims of greatness and images of the remaining ruins, and seek to expose our historical tendency toward hubris while neglecting to credit the influential forces of animals. Vegh’s drawings capture the reputation of the rat: they are monumental yet ephemeral, silent but “equal builders of civilization alongside human influence.”8

Stephanie Kervin and Sylvana D’Angelo’s Making Bunnies begins with a hundred small plaster rabbits that multiply during the exhibition. This intimidating family of rabbits is made from molds based on one Kervin’s mother made for her as a child. Making Bunnies makes physical the process of reproducing that which is inherited. Playing on rabbits’ ability to quickly reproduce, Kervin and D’Angelo liken this to the perpetuation of inherited values, particularly in relation to the prejudicial act of speciesism that makes acceptable the mistreatment of pests and other animals.9 By staggering the installation, most will only have a limited view of the rabbits, as is the case when preordained attitudes toward masses of animals block us from individually interacting with each.

Losing animals in representational contexts is clear in Christina Knox’s photographs, Shooting the Mass Murder. In blurry, obscured images we see Knox’s attempts to document a mass murder of crows - between 16,000-32,000 - that congregate at dusk at a roosting site just outside Vancouver. These works may be regarded as a cooperative effort, with Knox bound by the shortcomings of her camera to get pale, gritty images of her subjects - which appear lost amongst residual distortion due to low light - without causing them duress from assistive lighting. Her photos engage us despite compromised clarity, embodying a critique of the need for our ideals to be met at the cost of animals’ well being.

Exotic Thrillers
“But you’re innocent when you dream” - Tom Waits

Bizarre portrayals of animals range from pure fantasy claimed as authentic to the housebound representations of wild creatures we never physically interact with. Our habit of dreaming may seem benign, but it is indicative of a larger tendency toward the exploitation and consumption of animal life. Works by Ashley Andrews, Valerie Sabaliauskas, Aidan Dahlin Nolan with Meghan and Kelsey Speakman, Renee Nault, and Hannah Myall quote various representations of animals that note a strange desire to find pleasure in creatures that are by definition lost.

Taxidermy has roots in the study of natural sciences that spread to the phenomenon of trophy display by hobbyists, collectors and hunters. Ashley Andrews’ paintings take up the absurd implications of this practice. Figures in Sniffing Boar, Green Weasel, and Red Fox are based on the moulds inserted into the hides of animals as well as the patterns in the wood painted on, but are barely identifiable as specific animals. In merging the components used in making trophies, Andrews’ paintings become the anti-trophy. By removing the skin, an image we can identify and recognize, Andrews de-values this form of animal “preservation,” while making attractive images, visually linking the grotesque with a desire to render beauty into possession-form.

Our experience of wildlife is often from a distance, as with reading of it in books, the subject of Valerie Sabaliauskas’ untitled installation of children’s encyclopedias. A sense of comfort is evoked by placing these objects, unquestioned from childhood, in our hands. However, within each book is a hollowed out space where a drawing of an endangered animal appears imprisoned, trapped in an unmoving stance.

Visiting animal sanctuaries and zoos is a fairly recent means of experiencing nature, though true wilderness is decidedly lacking in what are actually controlled and managed environments. Legends of Chincoteague by Aidan Dahlin Nolan, Kelsey Speakman and Meghan Speakman, is in the spirit of romantic, bucolic images captured on such visits, while drawing attention to the constructed aspect of these places. Large, hazy tourist-style snapshots of ponies in their fenced-in sanctuary and pens hang with sand and driftwood spread below. Legend has it that the ancestors of these ponies were shipwrecked off the coast of Virginia while being transported to South America. Children’s books by Marguerite Henry increased their fame, and put descendants of Misty, her real-life protagonist, in demand by private owners. Dahlin Nolan and the Speakmans present the strange dichotomy between being swept up in the story of these ponies through their romantic portrayal, and the abrupt realization via the fake beach that it is fictive narrative that fuels their appeal.

Yeti are the mysterious humanoid creatures whose existence depends on being lost. In I don’t mind the sight of you, Hannah Myall has scrawled these words alongside two identically posed yeti. She references the literary aspect of yeti’s existence - the power of words, folktales and rumours that keep them alive in our imaginations. It is also something of a passive yet romantic statement of acceptance - not minding the propagation of stories as replacements for the real thing. Yeti seem to signify our hope that there is something still left out there in the world to discover, an intact portion of nature that has escaped us. Yeti features the same figure traced repeatedly, simultaneously denoting the iconic nature of this creature, and the forgery of forgeries that are required for it to exist.

Farewell to Beasts is a series of paintings by Renee Nault that portray extinct fantasy animals, and suggest the sense of loss that occurs upon discovering their non-existence. Otherworldly creatures such as mermaids and gruesome Romanesque chimeras held real significance in the mythologies and religions of early civilizations. Nault is interested in the point of departure from the influence of these images. Ultimately her work suggests that truth is in the eye of the beholder, and the choice to believe in or be influenced by representations of animals in their physical absence, though felt by individuals, has more to do with large-scale consensus.

Today’s Fables
“The way we look to a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky/These are the days of miracle and wonder/And don’t cry baby/Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry” - Paul Simon

Misplaced attitudes granted animals in art significance only when anthropomorphized. A classic literary example, Aesop’s Fables portray animals as caricatures of human vices and virtues to teach us lessons in morality. Yet their inclusion provides no wisdom for interaction between our species. Rapidly changing circumstances within the world demand that today’s fables offer lessons in lives other than our own, as demonstrated by the works of Colleen Collins, Samuel Choisy, and Tania Sanhueza.

Colleen Collins’ performance, seen documented in The Summons Series, simulates a hunter beckoning prey to shoot for food, so done by using a calling device that animals respond to for an encounter with the opposite sex. When we summon another for our sustenance, at what cost is it to them? Conversely, if a summoned being comes willingly to us, can their intentions be considered selfless? The Summons Series brings issues of misanthropy and altruism to the fore in our relationships with others and our need to co-exist for survival. Animals missing from these landscapes are from the past, present, and future (the particular sites where the performances took place are rich with fossils from the Triassic and Jurassic periods). Collins relates their non-appearance to the physical and psychological nature of the site: these landscapes have been “acted upon severely,”10 as inhospitable in their appearance as they are in our mental conception of them. Signified as radical psychic geographies, Collins’ photographs allow us to move from image to the contents of our own minds, that sometimes mirror these rough landscapes.

Wonderfully ethereal, Samuel Choisy’s staged photographs of taxidermy animals in cityscapes were developed from exposures captured by a pinhole camera. Views of a Secret is an ongoing series exploring beauty and otherness within controlled and foreign environments. Our time with these images feels fleeting; we have caught a moment of beauty and the freedom and wildness that go along with it. There is a distinct sense of otherness that occurs with the transformative power these animals have on the cityscape. Being introduced to a foreign environment brings with it the realization of difference, identifying oneself as an other, rather than one who fits with the rest. Choisy’s work has connotations of the unseen, secret struggles animals and humans alike face to make a home in a new place when the old one has been left behind.

Focusing on Canadian wildlife, Tania Sanhueza’s practice resembles animal activism. The Great Auks were constructed from reclaimed and recycled fabrics, stitched carefully together and filled with natural fibres. Using environmentally conscious materials, Sanhueza’s work functions as an apology to this species ravaged by humans to the point of extinction. Docile in temperament, the flightless Great Auk was easily wiped out from its North Atlantic habitat where it once thrived in abundance. Using contradiction to raise awareness, the toy-like Auks are objects of desire, just as their real counterparts were to those who saw them as bankable commodities. Though the birds have been lost, their beauty is present for us to consider and engage with. This is the power of images: to influence our thinking about the world around us. For Sanhueza, it is as simple as making animals appeal to our sensibilities, so we stop taking them for granted, and become interested in learning about lives other than our own.

“If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, disease, suffering and famine - our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusements - they may partake of our origin in one common ancestor - we may be all netted together.” - Charles Darwin

Perhaps it is still a wild idea that animal and human life could possibly be interconnected. Everything up to this point has been marred by attempts to keep us separate. Humanity’s legacy smacks of this attitude that there is an “elsewhere,” a place where responsibility to the world disappears and the consequences of our actions only matter if they serve our needs. But there is only one place. Could animals and humans be any more alike in sharing the desire to find somewhere to belong?

1 This is the first time in the world's history that mass extinction has come about because of the actions of humans: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020171454.htm
2 For factors causing mass extinction of species, including habitat destruction, fragmentation and
ecosystem degradation: Foreman, Dave. Rewilding North America. Washington: Island Press, 2004.
3 This is an umbrella term used to describe various factors (like chemical pollution and climate change)
that interfere with the productivity, reproductive success and ecological development of organisms.
Freedman, Bill. Environmental Science A Canadian Perspective. Toronto: Prentice Hall, 2001.
pp270-271.
4 For a strong example of “pest” eradication: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/19/nation/na-wolves19.
One species driven to extinction through unrestrained harvesting is the passenger pigeon, a full account
given in: Stutchbury, Bridget. Silence of the Songbirds. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2007. pp25-26.
5 In the United States, half of all animals admitted to animals shelters are euthanized (between three and
four million): http://www.hsus.org/pets/issues_affecting_our_pets/
pet_overpopulation_and_ownership_statistics/hsus_pet_overpopulation_estimates.html
6 For criticisms and theoretically detrimental consequences of genetically engineering food animals:
Boyens, Ingeborg. Unnatural Harvest. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2000.
7 http://www.fathom.com/course/21701781/session1.html
8 Interview with Stephanie Vegh via email, Thursday May 29, 2008.
9 Our poor treatment of animals is due to inherited values and attitudes toward them; the ongoing denial of ethical and moral treatment of animals be-
cause they are not human is speciesism and about as reprehensible as sexism and racism: Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Harper Collins,
2002.
10 Interview with Colleen Collins via email, Tuesday October 14, 2008.
(c) Elizabeth Underhill 2009

Upcoming!

2008-12-20T17:10:00.005-05:00

Mis[place]d: Animals Lost and Found  

Curated by Elizabeth Underhill

  An exhibition of thirteen projects by emerging artists in photography, painting, drawing, video, and installation.  

Exhibition Dates: January 9 - 31, 2009
 Opening Reception: Friday January 9, 7 - 10PM
 Panel discussion with select artists: Wednesday January 21, 7 - 9PM  

Confronting growing environmental awareness and lavish indulgences on our furry loved ones, Mis[place]d critiques the notion of a healthy relationship between humans and animals.  

Humanity has brought about the world's sixth wave of mass extinction, while allowing pet and pest populations to approach staggering, unsustainable numbers.

 Engaging the humourous and nostalgic yet subversive, these artists examine animal losses, challenging misplaced beliefs about our relationship with them, and what may be found in this.  

Featuring new and recent work by:
Ashley Andrews / Samuel Choisy / Colleen Collins / Stephanie Kervin & Sylvana D'Angelo / Christina Knox / Ian MacTilstra / Hannah Myall / Renee Nault / Aidan Dahlin Nolan, Kelsey Speakman & Meghan Speakman / Laura Paolini
Valerie Sabaliauskas / Tania Sanhueza / Stephanie Vegh

For inquiries, please contact Serena Lee, XPACE Programming:
serena@xpace.info
416.849.2864

XPACE Cultural Centre
58 Ossington Ave
Toronto ON M6J 2Y7
Tues – Sat /12 – 6PM

www.xpace.info
416.849.2864

Kate Higgins: In an Interest of Preservation

2008-11-26T12:37:00.007-05:00

When confronted by one of Kate Higgins’ empty jackets, often a sense of loss comes to mind before that of preservation, as the title of her series would suggest. The well-worn tweed jacket hanging in the Window Box is startlingly animated in its frozen pose, despite lacking a body, lacking the history and stories behind its existence. Something is missing and we don’t know what it is, perhaps we will never know. But the charm of Higgins’ work is its appeal to our imagination to save some lasting moment from what would otherwise be a castaway.

Higgins’ jacket, bought at a used-clothing store, is locked in a permanent pose by her sculpting technique, while simultaneously appearing animated by some unseen personality. In this series, Higgins chose tweed jackets to be transformed into sculptures, believing they represent the passing of time. Indeed, tweed is timeless, it is durable and can be passed down from one person to the next. It is a material that crosses socio-economic boundaries, worn by poor and rich alike. Because of the lack of a body in this work, we are allowed to imagine anyone of any background with any history wearing this clothing.

Tweed is a fitting conduit for Higgins’ interest in the human condition and her concern for the environment. In and of itself, tweed is a strong metaphor for environmental sustainability. It is built to last, can be worn forever, and buying it from a used-clothing store (as Higgins did, first ensuring that profits are put toward social assistance programs) keeps it from going into the garbage and producing more waste. Her jacket challenges the current “green” fad of buying environmentally-friendly products. This trend is often counterproductive, with the cost of producing something new being higher than simply re-using or recycling that which already exists, as Higgins does here, so we may see new life in that which more often than not is taken for granted.

Supporting the jacket is a wire hanger covered in ridiculously lovely green moss hand-collected by Higgins while doing a residency in Italy. Moss connotes the strength of nature, its ability to permeate through all else and survive. How often have we spied a clump of moss clinging to a cement wall in the dead of winter, still bright as it was in the spring? The hanger, as a stand-in for the age-old crutch icon, if you will, signifies the dependence of humans on the environment. Notably it is moss, not roots, that the artist used. Stability and permanence are not implied, but rather mobility, transcendence of boundaries. We need nature, yet we slip through it so easily in the city. A rolling stone gathers no moss, after all. Yet the presence of green suggests in order for Higgins to create an identity for her jacket, she must connect it to nature, to pin it down for a moment long enough to be meditated upon.

This installation is only the first part of a larger project for Higgins. The jacket was taken to different places in Parkdale and photographed. Higgins finds places where the jacket may have come from, may have spent some time in someone’s life. In doing so, she creates a sense of returning home, giving value to an otherwise unwanted object. Her photographs and installations develop a narrative for the life of this jacket - the pose itself is not its only animating factor. For Higgins, this series of empty jackets is a way to literally put people back into nature, and connect them with their surroundings.

Seeing the jacket located in ephemeral homes, as in the case of the Window Box, another element comes in to play. Not only are we invited to imagine a life for the jacket, but we are also challenged into looking at the space it hangs in differently. What do we associate with the space, based on the jacket’s pose? What do we associate with the jacket, based on the space? Again, Higgins links transience with permanence, and destabilizes notions of each. In doing so, she epitomizes the paradox of our lives: our own struggle with creating identity.

The absence of the body in this work is parallel to our absence in nature as urban city dwellers. Caught in the confines of the Window Box, the jacket is specimen-like, encased and preserved, well-kept away from the world. With degrees in biology and psychology, as well as her BFA, Higgins is well-versed in the destructive effects of living in urban areas completely disconnected from nature. “As the 21st century progresses, the effects of climate change, environmental degradation, and growing economic inequality dramatically increases the potential for displacement and social conflicts,” she notes.

However, there is still a certain solemn whimsy to her work. The pervasiveness of hope is illustrated by the liveliness of the jacket’s pose - the sign that there is something there we can’t resist reaching out to, even through the simple gesture of imagining a story. All her jackets are representative of individuals, with closest ties to those those who have been cast away and are unwanted, as the jackets are, despite their everlasting quality. How often do we treat our environment this way, with complete heartlessness and total disregard? How lightly do we take our own lives, and those of others? With oblivion characterizing so many in the world, in Higgins’ work there is a shot at redemption for a conscientious outlook, for us, for the people around us, and for nature.

Kate Higgins: In an Interest of Preservation is on view at the Window Box Gallery, 1313 Queen Street West from 26 November - 21 December 2008.

Mark Laliberte: Sexus

2008-10-30T20:27:00.005-04:00

After finding a personally poignant sentence in the novel Sexus by controversial yet groundbreaking author Henry Miller, Mark Laliberte created a site-specific sculpture of the same name that brings form to text. The quote is not exact in his installation for the Window Box Gallery at Gallery 1313. Each brick is etched with one word from Laliberte’s version of the quote which makes the sentence, “Word against word brick against brick put one brick against the other like an honest brick layer.” In this installation, the bricks are haphazardly massed in a pile with the words scrambled, rendering the sentence, at first glance, illegible.

Miller and Laliberte have both had their share of persecution for their literary works. Each faced trials for violations of obscenity laws, and each was cleared of charges. Obscenity laws have a long history in Canada’s artistic community as representing governmental oppression and misunderstanding, censoring works that are unfairly judged by the same standards as deliberately harmful or immoral materials. In Sexus, Laliberte links his own literary practice to Miller’s, thereby visualizing the historic struggle faced by artists to have true freedom of expression.

Considering the brick as a symbol for words, a wall would be a sign of writerly success. In Sexus, the wall is broken and non-sensical, indicating a thwarted artistic attempt. Often this difficulty to lay bricks, so to speak, to build something up, can be traced back to the forces against writing, against expression. Frequently these forces can be chalked up to prejudice, fighting that which is not understood or conventionally accepted. But is it possible to determine set rules for that which is acceptable and what is not? The disorganized presentation of these words suggests that the tools we conventionally use for understanding are not applicable or useable here in the reading of this work, that a new perspective is required.

Laliberte’s work reflects an interest in the obscure, fuzzy areas of knowledge that are beyond our grasp or ability to define. He frequently creates collages or mergers between media that create hybrids, resisting limitations of form, definition or rules. His attributes his artistic practice to inspiration from subcultural forms of expression, such as comics and zines, that blend images with words to create meaning, while resisting academic or traditional literary methods. This experimental nature of his work is clear in Sexus. By using his own variation on Miller’s quotation, he subverts institutionalized practices and their demand for “purity.” Laliberte describes this as a method of control, the need to cite sources and use exact quotes to allow words to be traced back to their original author. Laliberte, though he pays tribute to Miller in the title of this piece, still uses Miller’s words for his own expression, claiming originality and recognition for his artistic individuality. Experimentation is not bound by rules, and so is necessarily a tool for freedom.

Crucial to this work is Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concept of the rhizome. In nature, a rhizome is root structure that grows horizontally and sends up shoots vertically. As a model for thinking, it suggests our apprehension of the world occurs in a non-linear form, creating intersections of meaning in multiple axes, rather than in a flat line or logical progression. In terms of linguistics, understanding occurs in a more far reaching way than is typically acknowledged or imposed. Associations can be made with individual words, which shoot out multiple meanings on their own, rather than having meaning when taken together as part of the straight line of a sentence. Sexus, a disorganized pile of words, challenges our way of thinking, and encourages us to exercise a different perspective, to branch out and create new meanings for these words instead of depending on conventional methods of understanding and forming them into a single line. By shrugging off the limits of one medium and combining it with another, Laliberte’s experimentation with form opens up discussion about why we have limitations, why they are imposed, and what we miss out on if we conform to them.

In the context of the space this piece is being exhibited, Sexus has even larger implications. Formerly a police station, the building at 1313 Queen Street West is now a site of inclusivity, openness, freedom of expression, and cultural support. The rooms that were once prison cells are no longer areas of restriction for failure to conform to rules. Oppression and punishment have made way for far more beneficial services to the community of Parkdale. Just as the bricks of Sexus represent, this neighbourhood has its own set of struggles. It is difficult to sustain a community that has so many forces against it, and restore it to a degree that benefits all those living within it. But perhaps in order to do this, as signified by Sexus, some hybrid needs to take shape in order for strong walls to be built up, and the weaker ones broken down.

Mark Laliberte: Sexus on view at the Window Box Gallery, 1313 Queen Street West from 29 October - 23 November 2008.