Raphaëlle de Groot- The Burden of Objects, January 1st – April 26, 2009. SAAG, Lethbridge. REVIEWED by Jasia Stuart

When Raphaëlle de Groot put out a call for objects that “you no longer need or want, and items that have become a burden,” I was fascinated, but entirely unsure of what I would find in her collection. Arriving in her space at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, de Groot’s collection of unwanted objects entitled The Burden of Objects immediately took on a persona, creating a portrait of the community by providing a rare view of objects people had invested with emotion or fell obligated to hold onto.

Existing somewhere between the things we use everyday, the things we treasure forever and the trash we part with gladly each day, the objects Montréal artist de Groot has received occupy a materialist limbo. It is precisely the absence of necessity, love or disposability that makes these objects both specific and revealing. Many of them contain a spark of recognition, as if they could have been mine fifteen years ago, magically transported from dusty basement to art gallery.

De Groot has relocated to Lethbridge from Montréal for four months to begin this project. For this duration she will be SAAG’s Artist in Residence, collecting objects from the community, arranging them in a space at the gallery and hosting various events to encourage the public to re-arrange and interact with the objects.


Image credit: In collaboration, a series of open workshops organized at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery as part of the project The Burden of Objects with Raphaëlle de Groot. Photo: Tricia Butt

Over the past ten years of her practice, de Groot has undertaken some ambitious projects, from working on the design of the Square des Frères-Charon in Montréal to collaborating with nuns in the piece Dévoilements. Her work refuses to be constrained to a single medium or working method, and takes immense strength from this uncompromising pursuit of ideas.

Not wanting to distance myself from the process by not participating, I hand over my personal contribution to de Groot’s collection; a dress too fantastical to be worn in public again. I am asked to fill out a questionnaire detailing the origin of the dress as well as its significance to me. Initially I think that de Groot is interested in this information for its own sake, but later I suspect that she is documenting the origins of the objects she collects because once they become part of her collection, the history they carried with them will fall away. Liberated from their past, the items will take on new meaning as they are rearranged and re-contextualized.
This strategy of incorporating any objects that are brought to her, as well as having visitors to the space freely rearrange the objects, takes some of the power to direct the meaning of the work away from the artist. In this respect, I think de Groot’s piece illustrates some of the ideas of Italian writer Italo Calvino in his 1967 lecture "Cybernetics and Ghosts". In it he argues that the reader holds the important role of creator, finding meaning by relating the symbols present in a story, while the writer on the other hand is a robot, ceaselessly combining any and all symbols present in a culture. More and more, artists such as de Groot are stepping away from narrating a single meaning to the audience, and are instead taking on the role of guides, instigators and caretakers.

One of the initial draws of this exhibition, hinted at by de Groot’s call for burdensome objects, was the possibility that abstract qualities such as love, devotion, rejection or resentment could be transferred physically into objects. Was it possible that in her collection I would be able to see traces of love and abandonment in the possessions people where surrendering?

It was of course a long shot to believe that the emotions of the objects’ owners would somehow make themselves visible. Other than their dated nature, there is no particular evidence of the objects’ burdensome relationship to their owners. The physical identity of the objects is the sum total of the burden.

The collected objects are, however, oddly melancholic; discarded toys (mainly rabbits) and small broken electrical appliances populate the space, objects that have been overlooked and neglected for a long time before being surrendered into de Groot’s collection.

Stacked one on top of each other inside the gallery space, the piles of objects become organic sculptural forms hanging off the walls or pushing out of the floor. De Groot initiated many of the arrangements herself and often rearranges things, but she encourages visitors to take the principal role in arranging and building with these objects, again allowing some kind of collective community identity to manifest itself in the project space.


Image credit: The Burden of Objects, collaborative project with Raphaëlle de Groot, view of the open studio, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 2009. Photo: Raphaëlle de Groot.

The ebb and flow of the work, as it is constantly being added to and re-arranged by visitors, becomes one of the difficulties of describing the piece. The Alice in Wonderland-like state in which I saw it, populated with many toy rabbits and fake flowers, the most frequently donated items, has no doubt by this point transformed itself into an altogether different narrative.

However, while the feelings of their owners may not have directly altered any of the objects, the collective identity of these objects does hint at certain characteristics, characteristics we pick out to love or represent our affection to others who soon loose interest, or that initially fascinate us with the promise of usefulness but instead quickly become superfluous. Toys and decorations are mainly saccharine and overly sentimental, while the abandoned electrical appliances seem to promise the future, with a certain space aged appeal. De Groot has plans to continue the piece in other locations, including Italy, and it will be interesting to see how overall qualities of burdensome objects change as different communities contribute to the piece.

In the work’s collective identity, infinite narratives are present in the ever changing accumulation of objects, each item representing the starting point of a story that connects each visitor to the previous participants. In contrasting to this, in a more material sense, as the weight of ownership for each object is transferred to the artist, the meaning becomes the singular story of the power objects have over their owners, very literally demonstrating the physical burden of accumulated objects.

- J.S. (Red Deer)

Christopher Willard "IT ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK” at Herringer Kiss Gallery, March 7 - 28, 2009. REVIEWED by Laurel Smith*

Eight easel-sized, vibrantly patterned paintings float and flicker on the walls at Herringer Kiss Gallery. These dynamic, super-saturated works by Christopher Willard demand a closer reading.


Image credit: Christopher Willard "IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERLOOK" 2009. Courtesy of Herringer Kiss Gallery.

A meticulous two-colour grid of squares appears along the top horizon of each acrylic painting. Small dots of white paint are precisely positioned at each intersection of overlapping lines. The grid shifts with a blink: its painted dots momentarily vanish and then reappear as the complement, or opposite colour of the adjacent grid. Blink again, they return to white; blink once more, the cycle repeats. These small dots fleetingly taunt and titillate the eye. They signal the experience of seeing. They create an over-abundance of visual stimuli, fatiguing the eye-brain system and causing perceptions to seemingly disintegrate and regenerate before our eyes. Whether the science of visual phenomena is clearly understood or not, Willard reminds us that “it isn’t what you think”.

His work functions as what Gianni Vattimo calls a novum, a common horizon in which two interlocutors (paint and word) present themselves as something new. Willard approaches Contemporary Geometric Abstraction by expanding on a long and rich lineage. Recall the early 20C paintings by Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian; the mid-century Op-Art and Hard-Edge works by Victor Vasarely; the Neo-Geo movement of the 1980s with contributions by Peter Halley, and the witty Conceptual paintings of the late 1990s by Richard Prince.

Willard employs essential elements from Optical Art to achieve the effects seen in his fluctuating grid patterns. His structural, or presentational approach is located at the lower portion of each painting where he arranges larger coloured squares. In some compositions the hard-edged squares grow progressively more colourful as they head toward the middle of the painting. In others the colouration of squares is less intense but deliberately lead the eye across the picture plane toward the edges. All squares are surrounded by a background of contrasting colour that emphasize the overall rectilinear format of painting. In contrast to the precise applications of paint on the surfaces, the edges around the outside margins of the paintings are over-spilled with bits of paint. This shows the hand made quality of his painting process, evidence that these works are not repetitions of the industrially fabricated art of the mid-20 century.



Image credit: Christopher Willard "READ BETWEEN THE LINES" 2009. Courtesy of Herringer Kiss Gallery.

His final touch are aphorisms neatly engraved into the surface of each painting. The inscribed words expose the raw Plexiglas panel that is the substrate of the painting. These captions are both literal and visual impressions. “IT ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK”, “READ BETWEEN THE LINES”, “SOMETHING TO LOOK INTO”, prompt double entendre readings. Multiple interpretations are made possible. It is clear that Christopher Willard articulates fresh contemporary painting at its best, transforming how we read works of art.

- L.S. Calgary

*Disclosure: Laurel Smith is partner and colleague of Christopher
Willard. Her insights about his work are
partly informed by this collaborative relationship.

Prairie Artsters: Moving on from Montréal*

For as long as I can remember, since trolling around on the inefficient Edmonton public transit system from nowhere north side to dead end west end as a preteen, since brooding year after year about remaining in Edmonton for another year, I too had always harboured the urge to leave. And not leave to just anywhere in particular, but specifically, I, along with legions before and after me, wanted desperately to move to Montréal.

La belle ville. Where you can seemingly live cheaply and freely forever. Where you can’t spit without hitting an artist. Where you can ride your bicycle everywhere and partake in an array of everything any day and any night of any week.

The years went by and I never did leave. At least not for Montréal. Never finding the pull strong enough or the push great enough, I ended up back where I started to try again.

But since those early days of dirt city angst, I have watched legions come, leave, return and leave again, perpetuating a rhythmic lulling cycle.

Last week, I finally dropped into Montréal on a research visit to witness Studio 303’s Edgy Women Festival. The curation of multidisciplinary performance works by Miriam Ginestier was certainly inspiring in scope and variety, with highlights including choreography from Chanti Wadge as performed by Isabelle Poirier, bittersweet performance artist Jess Dobkin, the always electric eclectian Alexis O’Hara, plus Edmonton’s own Kristine Nutting’s scaled-down remount of Pig. The 100-capacity theatre at Tangente was packed each night, and Nutting’s show brought out one ex-Edmontonian after another, who came out to see her Prairie gothic performance in Montréal. As the only Canadian artist representing west of Toronto, Nutting reaffirmed for me that our fetishization of elsewhere neglects to acknowledge what we already have brewing in our own backyard.

Working in a city like Edmonton demands infinitely more self-directed focus, and the trade-off is more process time for those who are committed. There is less of an expectation to persistently churn out more work; in fact, it has become clear that you can only viably create one or two works a year, in whatever medium you work in.

Checking out the visual arts scene during the day and touring the endless galleries in the Belgo building, hitting the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, DHC/ART, La Galerie Centrale and other spots, it proved that within Canada more does not equal better. The ratio of quality work to unprocessed works remains level in proportion, and so the result is seeing a ton of bad art with a few gems, most of which was created by artists from elsewhere.

You really can’t walk without tripping over an artist of some sort, and most likely they’re riding their bicycle to one of the many free or affordable cultural events that everyone from all ages seems to attend in passionate droves. Everyone is creative, almost all of the time; but there, like here, like most everywhere, is a vacuum unto itself. That vacuum is important for generating works specific and conscious of their environment and communities, as that becomes the cultural hallmark of any place; but for those who choose to stay and create, they need to be nourished, and that means growing both the work and the audience by injecting new and challenging works alongside the existing status quo instead of simply defaulting to elsewhere.

- A.F. Edmonton
*First published in Vue Weekly, April 2 - 9, 2009