Curated by Megan Bertagnolli and based on the collection of Francis Brown and the gorgeous findings within the U of A Bruce Peel Special Collection, Artists' Books gathers some of the finest specimens of artist books made in the last fifty years in their original fragility.
As a far more transient and adaptable mode of creation and expression, the artist book is at best a raw snapshot of the artist's mind at work through both image and text. Wit, scrawls, personality, and presence permeates each and every single piece, presented in the usual glass cases as well as flattened out along the walls, a laudable move in making the words far more readable and each work less object-orientated by stressing its potential for engagement.
Scanning piece to piece, it's evident that most conceptual artists have at one point or another made an artist book: Joseph Kosuth, Yoko Ono, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Sol Lewitt; but my personal favorites were from Brown himself and Lucy Lippard, where the banality of formal text, in forms of bureaucratic compositions and regulations, becomes a play of visual poetics. With the same playful dissidence as poet Ted Berrigan's faux interview with John Cage or the paratextual play of Ring Lardner, Francis Brown over throws the authority of the written word and wrestles it down to the level of absurdity, crashing down with it meaning, language, and structure.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Prairie Artsters - Sister Cities*
Edmonton to Winnipeg. The horror of last week’s Greyhound incident came days after I met Shawna Dempsey, Winnipeg-based artist, curator and performer. Over the course of a week, we shared extended discussions about our respective cities, especially in reference to our “murder city” reputations. Having traded the number one ranking for homicide in Canada back and forth for the last number of years, Edmonton and Winnipeg must share some sort of social affinity, we thought, and this horrific act of randomness only deepens the ongoing inquiry into the relation between a place and its people.
In town for Visualeyez, Dempsey agreed to meet up and talk about the pros and cons of living and creating in a relatively isolated city, and the mentality it takes to prosper—or even just survive.
Originally hailing from Scarborough, Dempsey is of course one half of the infamous Lorri Millan and Shawna Dempsey duo, who have created works ranging from their seminal collaboration “We’re Talking Vulva” (1990) to their terrorist organization, Consideration Liberation Army, and a lengthy list of projects that cross-pollinate media and aesthetics. They have curated three major Winnipeg-based group shows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, taking a critical look at how contemporary artists are responding to the city they call home (Subconscious City, 2008) and what the upcoming generation of local artists are doing (Supernova, 2006).
Touring extensively, collected nationally and representing Canada on the international scale, Dempsey relates that although Winnipeg may not be for everyone with their curiously high levels of eccentricities, the city has been a solid base from which to create and cultivate. Straddling between the realms of “serious art” and entertainment, Dempsey and Millan’s works are charged with political sentiments masked in wry humour, with costumes to match. Performing on the street and in malls, galleries, recreation centres, comedy clubs and even churches, Dempsey thinks that the redneck honesty of Winnipeg has helped in the long run.
“It allows me to engage with the city and the people instead of always just talking to fellow artists,” she explains. “It’s nice sometimes, but when I was in Toronto, everyone I hung out was a lesbian socialist feminist! In Winnipeg, the crowds are different; I’m talking to cops, plumbers, bakers. It’s more real and it connects to your community.”
Like Edmonton, Winnipeg is a blue collar city filled with citizens who love talking about the city for better or for worse, internally marvelling over its own constant stream of complexities and simplicities. With Calgary as the next closest major Canadian city for both Winnipeg and Edmonton, disconnection broods a mentality to give things a try and make things happen on your own, that anyone can do anything over a “who do you think you are” attitude. One major difference is that, while it is also a developer-driven city, Winnipeg has one of the best municipal and provincial funding bodies in Canada, second only to Québec. There is also less of a transient mentality there than there is here, lending heart to long-term investments and building out connections through stability.
While everyone continues to try and grapple with the sensational and devastating news that is circulating world wide, its aftershocks are slowly rippling through our city streets. Individuals are a little more conscious of the strangers around them on the bus, eye contact is diminishing; small, subtle changes in how we interact with each other collectively are taking shape. As an arts community, it is our responsibility to react and to respond. We are the interpreters; we may not have answers, we should not have answers, but we must investigate and express, because this is our home.
*First published in Vue Weekly, August 7 - 13, 2008
In town for Visualeyez, Dempsey agreed to meet up and talk about the pros and cons of living and creating in a relatively isolated city, and the mentality it takes to prosper—or even just survive.
Originally hailing from Scarborough, Dempsey is of course one half of the infamous Lorri Millan and Shawna Dempsey duo, who have created works ranging from their seminal collaboration “We’re Talking Vulva” (1990) to their terrorist organization, Consideration Liberation Army, and a lengthy list of projects that cross-pollinate media and aesthetics. They have curated three major Winnipeg-based group shows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, taking a critical look at how contemporary artists are responding to the city they call home (Subconscious City, 2008) and what the upcoming generation of local artists are doing (Supernova, 2006).
Touring extensively, collected nationally and representing Canada on the international scale, Dempsey relates that although Winnipeg may not be for everyone with their curiously high levels of eccentricities, the city has been a solid base from which to create and cultivate. Straddling between the realms of “serious art” and entertainment, Dempsey and Millan’s works are charged with political sentiments masked in wry humour, with costumes to match. Performing on the street and in malls, galleries, recreation centres, comedy clubs and even churches, Dempsey thinks that the redneck honesty of Winnipeg has helped in the long run.
“It allows me to engage with the city and the people instead of always just talking to fellow artists,” she explains. “It’s nice sometimes, but when I was in Toronto, everyone I hung out was a lesbian socialist feminist! In Winnipeg, the crowds are different; I’m talking to cops, plumbers, bakers. It’s more real and it connects to your community.”
Like Edmonton, Winnipeg is a blue collar city filled with citizens who love talking about the city for better or for worse, internally marvelling over its own constant stream of complexities and simplicities. With Calgary as the next closest major Canadian city for both Winnipeg and Edmonton, disconnection broods a mentality to give things a try and make things happen on your own, that anyone can do anything over a “who do you think you are” attitude. One major difference is that, while it is also a developer-driven city, Winnipeg has one of the best municipal and provincial funding bodies in Canada, second only to Québec. There is also less of a transient mentality there than there is here, lending heart to long-term investments and building out connections through stability.
While everyone continues to try and grapple with the sensational and devastating news that is circulating world wide, its aftershocks are slowly rippling through our city streets. Individuals are a little more conscious of the strangers around them on the bus, eye contact is diminishing; small, subtle changes in how we interact with each other collectively are taking shape. As an arts community, it is our responsibility to react and to respond. We are the interpreters; we may not have answers, we should not have answers, but we must investigate and express, because this is our home.
*First published in Vue Weekly, August 7 - 13, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
David Poolman, The Nauvoo Suite & Slawomir Grabowy, Self-Portrait 60 and 35, SNAP, July 24 - Sept 6, 2008, REVIEWED BY MANDY ESPEZEL
The show currently up in SNAP’s main gallery space is a combined exhibition which features the images of printmakers David Poolman and Slawomir Grabowy. The artists work with a similar aesthetic, but the bodies of work were created and remain completely separate. Poolman is exhibiting a series of prints based on themes of youthful rebellion and violence in the form of arson. Grabowy’s work is much less concrete in its source, but has a definite connection to the act of repetition in mark making, and how pictures are formed through material means. It was at first challenging to see a connection between these two series that was not obvious (both artists use black ink on white paper and have quite graphic styles, hard edged with little tonal variation). Considering their work separately helps to illuminate why they are shown together.
David Poolman 'deader' 6 archival inkjet prints on stonehenge, 22 x 40 cm, 2006
Poolman has on display what feels like two bodies of work. A vertical wall displays the series Deader, which consists of six Inkjet prints that each show a head of hair at a slightly larger-than-life scale, minus the heads. We see the intricate patterns of hair in shapes free floating on white paper, which weaves between existing as positive and negative space. It becomes the face, the mouth, a neck. They look like abandoned wigs that have been discarded for being out of date. Next to this is The Burning of the Nauvoo Temple, a series of woodcut prints that are much more abstracted and generalized. They have a gritty feel, like really old pixilation.
David Poolman, 'the burning of the nauvoo temple', 9 woodcuts in stonehenge, 22 x 30 cm, 2006
In the summary for the show, Poolman explains how he interprets arson as a symbol of unrest and dissent. The black and white forms in these prints are vaguely descriptive, reading as dramatically simplified landscapes, or buildings. The lack of detail creates an unsettling sense of visual destruction, as if the formally clear picture has been degraded to this point of obscurity. The connection between Poolman’s ‘hair’ pieces and the Nauvoo Temple work is unexplained, but they do seem to have some sort of relationship; perhaps it’s referring to the importance youth place on hair styles, contrasted with the desire to rebel against such shallow expression in violent and destructive ways.
Where Poolman works within a destruction-becomes-image context, Grabowy uses mark making as a kind of personal record. Self-portrait 60 and 35 is the title of his show, which consists of mostly geometric and organically shaped forms, carved from linocuts.
Slawomir Grabowy 'My 3rd Kopiec' linocut, 49 x 73 cm, 2008
There is a strong coloration between Grabowy’s prints and the infamous ‘Op-Art’ of earlier generations. Patterns of stripes and diagonal lines with shifting line weights create an optical effect of movement and volume. To Grabowy, the act of cutting into a surface becomes a record of time. No attempt is made to refer to anything explicitly figurative or representational, other than geometrical shapes. Lines of flat black ink vibrate on the surface, with the white paper serving as both ground and form, activating the space between each individual mark. This work is extremely formal in execution, and maintains a conceptual emphasis on personal expression through the use of material. Which is perhaps the connection between the work of these artists. Both use very simple shapes, consisting of black marks, to formulate pictures that balance between describing an image, and allowing the image to remain un-defined. This ambiguity is pursued in the actual physical creation of the print, and in their individual motivations of why they make images. The two exhibitions could be easily simplified based on their visual similarities, but the contrasts between the bodies of work provide for some multifaceted interpretations.
David Poolman 'deader' 6 archival inkjet prints on stonehenge, 22 x 40 cm, 2006
Poolman has on display what feels like two bodies of work. A vertical wall displays the series Deader, which consists of six Inkjet prints that each show a head of hair at a slightly larger-than-life scale, minus the heads. We see the intricate patterns of hair in shapes free floating on white paper, which weaves between existing as positive and negative space. It becomes the face, the mouth, a neck. They look like abandoned wigs that have been discarded for being out of date. Next to this is The Burning of the Nauvoo Temple, a series of woodcut prints that are much more abstracted and generalized. They have a gritty feel, like really old pixilation.
David Poolman, 'the burning of the nauvoo temple', 9 woodcuts in stonehenge, 22 x 30 cm, 2006
In the summary for the show, Poolman explains how he interprets arson as a symbol of unrest and dissent. The black and white forms in these prints are vaguely descriptive, reading as dramatically simplified landscapes, or buildings. The lack of detail creates an unsettling sense of visual destruction, as if the formally clear picture has been degraded to this point of obscurity. The connection between Poolman’s ‘hair’ pieces and the Nauvoo Temple work is unexplained, but they do seem to have some sort of relationship; perhaps it’s referring to the importance youth place on hair styles, contrasted with the desire to rebel against such shallow expression in violent and destructive ways.
Where Poolman works within a destruction-becomes-image context, Grabowy uses mark making as a kind of personal record. Self-portrait 60 and 35 is the title of his show, which consists of mostly geometric and organically shaped forms, carved from linocuts.
Slawomir Grabowy 'My 3rd Kopiec' linocut, 49 x 73 cm, 2008
There is a strong coloration between Grabowy’s prints and the infamous ‘Op-Art’ of earlier generations. Patterns of stripes and diagonal lines with shifting line weights create an optical effect of movement and volume. To Grabowy, the act of cutting into a surface becomes a record of time. No attempt is made to refer to anything explicitly figurative or representational, other than geometrical shapes. Lines of flat black ink vibrate on the surface, with the white paper serving as both ground and form, activating the space between each individual mark. This work is extremely formal in execution, and maintains a conceptual emphasis on personal expression through the use of material. Which is perhaps the connection between the work of these artists. Both use very simple shapes, consisting of black marks, to formulate pictures that balance between describing an image, and allowing the image to remain un-defined. This ambiguity is pursued in the actual physical creation of the print, and in their individual motivations of why they make images. The two exhibitions could be easily simplified based on their visual similarities, but the contrasts between the bodies of work provide for some multifaceted interpretations.
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