Exhibition Review Visceral Bodies

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Exhibition Review: Geoffrey Farmer The Surgeon and the Photographer

Exhibition Review: Geoffrey Farmer The Surgeon and the Photographer

Emily Carr 1992 graduate, Geoffrey Farmer exhibited The Surgeon and the Photographer at Catriona Jeffries Art Gallery from January 29^th to March 6^th, 2010. The show consisted of an army of cut-and-paste figures also known as The Last Two Million Years. There was also 2 filmic pieces that had to do with similar content, one being a computer controlled montage which used images from Life Magazine.

The title references Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935). The two paragraphs from that text involve a comparison of a painter and a cameraman within a corresponding analogy of a magician and a surgeon. He tries to point out that a cameraman is closer in proximity to reality than a painter, despite the obvious problem that his reality is always filtered through a machine. With the critique of painting and the promotion of cinematic film aside, Benjamin’s states that “…the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law.” (Benjamin) This “new law” could refer to the specific methodology of creating each of the 365 pieces in the show and this assemblage will always be somewhat fragmentary in nature. The exhibition title calls up images of the collage process, where material is cut with precision, much like a surgery, and that material was offered up by a camera as it is mostly photographic.

But each piece also uses cloth and is put into a 3 dimensional arrangement. This is an unconventional outcome for a collage and creates a dialogue between it and another medium, sculpture. The problem of translation makes this relationship especially interesting since the photographic print bits remain 2D within this new 3D art form. Each flimsy seemingly temporary structure, often with its scotch-tape exposed, is put together on black bases with supporting posts which are uniform throughout the show.

With white pedestals at various heights and a non-linear organization of the figures, the show supposedly incorporates the non-hierarchical presentation technique by Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas. This becomes a way for Farmer to intellectually forfeit the authoritarian role over the installation. Of course, this is assuming we forget the problematic setting of the white cube and that Geoffrey needed to maintain a constant number of pieces to use the framework of a typical calendar year. In the original, Aby Warburg’s own subject position was expressed through his endless work as “…he searches for the proper arrangement of his fragmentary universe.” (Dillon) The comparison offered by the exhibition is not entirely useful as Warburg’s memory map would have been more malleable as he journeys through time and space. One table in the exhibition is in direct contradiction to this idea, where the central group carries long flag-like posts unlike the outer figures on the edges, making it appear aesthetically dictated.

Warburg was also an early researcher of the Native American Hopi, whose Kachina dolls bare a resemblance to these sculptures by Farmer. However, these new dolls do not carry dogmatic symbolic meaning or ceremonial purpose (unless we consider art gallery attendance a purposeful ceremony). Instead they seem to be a chaotic arrangement of a collective memory in limited availability as it’s expressed through printed photographic material.

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Illuminations Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. 217-251

Dillon, Brian. “Collected Works: Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas”. Frieze. Issue 80, January-February 2004

Exhibition Review: An Invitation to An Infiltration at the CAG

The group exhibition An Invitation to An Infiltration is currently being held at the Contemporary Art Gallery, running from January 21st to February 28th, 2010. The show was put together by visiting curator Eric Fredericksen who is director of the art space Western Bridge in Seattle, Washington. It included artists at various stages of their career, from local and abroad, such as: Hadley+Maxwell, Jordan Wolfson, Dexter Sinister, Jonathan Middleton, Fia Backström, Holly Ward, and Lucy Clout.

In justifying the show and explaining his inspiration, Fredericksen references Andrea Fraser’s writing on the institutionalization of Institutional Critique. It has become no longer shocking or radical to challenge, deconstruct or bring attention to the white cube, the sterile gallery space and the bureaucracy around it, and in some ways it’s to be expected in contemporary art. An Invitation to An Infiltration hoped to re-hatch and disrupt the discourse once again.

To do this the show is meant to change over time through the process of various artistic interventions – as if an ongoing performance, or a malleable installation. This state of flux affects the titles, format and placement of artworks. Also, entirely new works can be added. Rather comically, the title of the entire exhibition is being debated between the curator and an artist. The show mandate challenges the assumption that art objects are meant to hold still, being captive by the audience and institution around it. The fact such a volatile entity is a group show means that An Invitation to An Infiltration is a set of ongoing negotiations. The show utilizes not only the interior of CAG but the outside and the text, paraphernalia, and discussions around the show.

Lucy Clout’s piece Untitled (eyebrows) (2008), a painted grey board of MDF is displayed suspended at eye level, therefore limiting the viewer’s view. At one point the work was installed in front of the reception desk, making it hard to normally interact with the gallery attendant. In ducking under to avoid the obstruction, the viewer would find themselves uncomfortably close. The artist Jonathan Middleton shows a proposal that the exhibition title be changed to: “Strange. The first time I’ve heard of a piano with four legs… (Hey, I keep falling down!)”. Dexter Sinister created various wood objects with use value like a shelf, twin lecterns and a sandwich board. Some other props were less clearly defined, but were meant to be eventually put to use. With this work, Sinister plays with the old Kantian definition that art has no function. In a related sculptural work, Hadley+Maxwell erected a marble pedestal with nothing on it.

A private performance by Hadley references the difficulty in critiquing the show. Dressed as a male 18th century art critic, she went through the show interacting with the artwork either with passive detachment or violence. In experiencing any of these works in their current but temporary state, makes the whole thing seem unsettled. This art is set up to be continually in the act of turning, making it impossible to be pinned down to any one interpretation. However, this could be a useful way to read art as it takes into account the ever changing context of time and space. It underscores that the comforting idea of fixed meaning or universal truth is a myth.

Exhibition Review - Backstory: Nuuchannulth Ceremonial Curtains

Backstory: Nuuchannulth Ceremonial Curtains and the Work of Ki-ke-in is a current Cultural Olympiad exhibition at the Belkin Art Gallery running from January 17^th to March 28^th, curated by Charlotte Townsend-Gault of UBC. The show focused on the thliitsapilthim, which are large ceremonial curtains painted to signify the family ancestry of the owner. These were displayed on the walls in the largest room which also held a glass case showing a carved mask and an intricately woven basket. The right side of the main room displayed some smaller fabric robes and partitioned off several video viewing stations for films, documentaries and interviews. Most work was accompanied with a textual “backstory” about the piece and the owners. This literature ranged from conversational personal narratives, notes from the artist and/or an objective formal history. In the smaller space to the right of the gallery entrance showed many framed and greatly detailed drawings by Ḳi-ḳe-in. Also along this wall were display cases that held mementos, personal photographs, and a collection of carved and painted whistles.

Several curtains by unknown artists were older, from the 19^th century, which were notably different from the more contemporary featured paintings of Ḳi-ḳe-in (Ron Hamilton) of the Nuuchaanulth in the same show. Historically, these older pieces were produced post-European contact, which occurred in 1778. Therefore the stylistic difference does not denote any assumed “purity” or “authenticity” of culture. In fact, the older curtains were less typical looking for what we now expect of First Nation’s design. One noteworthy example was a very long curtain (71x892 cm) that ran the entire northern wall entitled Kwaayats’iik (All Wolves) (c. 1900). This shows a line of 11 loosely rendered wolves formatted to appear life-size, each with a distinct body decorative pattern and colour.

Thluut’otl Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1880) by an unknown artist was another painting of an early and uniquely executed curtain. The empty space around the objects and figuration is unusual because there still appears to be an implied pictorial depth. There are only two colours blue and iron oxide red used to describe, in a semiotic simplicity, the narrative and symbology of a coming of age potlatch ceremony for a girl named Effie Tate. The word Aytsaksuu-ilthim is defined in the exhibition catalog as a “…girl’s moveable puberty curtain”. The swing is symbolic for her transition from girlhood to womanhood. On the right there is two feast bowls fashioned as small war boats and the fins and meat of a whale is throughout the foreground.

The newer thliitsapilthim where predominately painted by the featured contemporary artist, Ḳi-ḳe-in aka Ron Hamilton. When compared to the 19^th century paintings, Ki-ke-in’s aesthetic seems very polished. One possible reason for this could be that the semiotics and general style of aboriginal design solidified and became more deliberate to provide a strong binary to Canada’s Eurocentric art. It would be important to note that the older curtains were made before the total impact of reservation schools, the Indian Act (1885) and other National governmental policies to destroy the language and culture of First Nations people was felt. More stylistic variation was possible before and it was more likely that amateur painter’s designed the thliitsapilthim. First Nation’s cultural contributors and artists like Ron Hamilton would be working under new pressures coupled with the influential European myth of the genius painter, and the general idea that an individual stuck to, and therefore became an expert at, only one discipline.

Ron Hamilton’s 20^th century thliitsapilthims have a strong graphic quality, which would make them translate to print or silkscreen very easily, as shown in his Naakshuu-isks Thliitsapilthim (1993) and several others. For comparison, Chachimin Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1850) by unknown has black paint dry-brush dabbing for the bird feathers and interiors of the animals. Much of the older pieces had painterly edges and suggestions of spatial depth like the overlapping in Chachimin Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1850) or the implied foreground/background depth in Thluut’otl Aytsaksuu-ilthim (c. 1880). Ron Hamilton’s hard edge designs were very flat with no illusion of space. However these were the biggest and most impressive curtains of the show, particularly the huge monochrome entitled Nuukmiis Thliitsapilthim (1989) that described in saturated black paint a thunderbird, whale and raven.

However, Ḳi-ḳe-in aka Ron Hamilton was capable of painting illusionary pictorial space as illustrated by Yaalthuu-a Thliitsapilthim (1984-85). The bottom third of the painting consists of realistically rendered mountains in the distance emerging from the water which holds 2 occupied boats. The above central figure called a thunderbird had wings that were more realistically molded, but for the most part the larger graphic style figures look superimposed over the more traditional European-looking landscape. The lack of unity isn’t disappointing because its rather daring to attempt the fusion and the effort is commendable. This hybrid form of contemporary art by First Nations is welcomed in Vancouver’s art community as it fits in with Brian Jungen and Lawrence Yuxweluptun.