Dave and Jenn, Dave and Jenn are hungry (detail of side one), 2008, mixed media double sided painting, 10.5 x 10.5 x 2.5
ON YOUR MARKS | BLAIR BRENNAN, KRIS LINDSKOOG, DAVID FOY AND JENNIFER SALEIK, RON MOPPETT, ROBIN ARSENEAULT, M.N. HUTCHINSON, JOHN WILL, SCOTT ROGERS, PAUL WOODROW, FAYE HEAVYSHIELD, TERRANCE HOULE, MANDY ESPEZEL, DAGMAR DAHLE, DENTON FREDRICKSON, BILLY J. MCCARROLL, GLEN MACKINNON
09.17.2010 to 11.14.2010
As the inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Southern Alberta Art Gallery, On Your Marks celebrates a diversity of relationships between artists, institutions and communities. Featuring installations by individuals, pairs or trios, the exhibition will investigate ideas of collaboration, dialogue and influence, and in doing so, reveal some of the overlaps and departures that surface among different generations of artists working in southern Alberta.
Dagmar Dahle + Mandy Espezel
One of the more common, yet significant ways in which different generations dialogue is as teacher and student. For Dahle, a painting instructor at the University of Lethbridge, and Espezel, a student in their MFA program, their exchange acknowledged shared interests in the language and process of painting, embodied experience and autobiographical practices.
Dahle and Espezel both approach their work as a solitary process, and any collaborative effort here resides in the mutual struggle of painting and negotiating its complex legacy. It is in the privileged exchange between two deeply engaged painters that they create an opportunity for re-examination and interpretation of painting that would otherwise remain untouched. For Espezel her investigation of small, intimate forms at once figurative and ambiguous has been challenged by Dahle such that she has decided to take the idea of the intuitive process and extend it to a scale that confronts the human body. For Dahle, the project has amplified her consideration of her role as a mentor and allows her to explore a more practice-based, counter-institutional version of this relationship. Informed by this shifting framework Dahle has revisited and extended her peripheral watercolour practice through a series of spontaneous or intuitive gestures on large canvases.
Blair Brennan + Kris Lindskoog
It's Only a Lie if No One Believes You
Appropriating their title from a poem by Alden Nowlan (1933 - 1983), Blair Brennan and Kris Lindskoog share an interest in poetry that ranges from the canons of English and Canadian poetry to the lyrics of country, blues and bluegrass songs. These artists also share an idiosyncratic (at times doodle-like) drawing style, frequent use of text in their artwork and a distinctive style of installation art that favors found or utilitarian objects.
The two have been plotting this conflation of practice for sometime, building on previous works by both artists and featuring Lindskoog's drawings and Brennan's branding irons and branded text. This collaborative installation work incorporates these and other elements and presents a story "written" (burned) on gallery walls and works on paper. "It's Only a Lie if No one Believes You" examines ideas of language and story and attempts to disrupt the controlling structure and restrictive logic of language.
Dave & Jenn + Ron Moppett
For Dave and Jenn, collaboration is a central tenet of their practice. While successfully negotiating the trials and rewards of sharing ‘one canvas’ the two have arrived at a signature style of painting blending the medium with sculptural elements. In this respect, their enthusiasm for Ron Moppett comes forward. The three share an affinity for iconic styles and motifs drawn from historic, popular and mythological sources often taking shape through stencils. Far more than a simple practical device, these stencils become reoccurring characters in their explorations and narratives, each one cherished even as new ones accumulate.
For SAAG, Dave & Jenn and Ron Moppett have joined their respective stashes of stencils and translated a selection into vinyl to create a large scale wall work. In addition, multiple objects are suspended from the ceiling in front and around the wall. Offering a point of reference for the stencils, both Dave & Jenn and Ron Moppett have selected a current work to be included in the installation.
Robin Arseneault (w. John Will and Hutch Hutchinson)
Lovestruck & Dumbstruck
Lovestruck & Dumbstruck is the offspring of Arsenault’s 2007 performance piece, Paradoxe sur le comedién (Part II) and a 2-week residency at the Gushul Studio (Blairmore, Alberta) where the venerable John Will and M.N.Hutchinson reprise their now infamous performance as conjoined twins.
For Lovestruck & Dumbstruck Arsenault created a series of stop-motion animations built from photographs of the twins at iconic locations in the rum-running, mining and even communist milieu of the Crowsnest Pass. Humourous, theatrical, troublesome and utterly compelling, the works question and reveal Arsenault’s relationships with Will and Hutchinson as both influential artists and good friends, amplified by a satirical consideration of collaboration and the challenges of an artistic practice more generally.
Besides the film projections, the physical exhibition includes sculptural components and a “commemorative poster” of the Conjoined Twins. The poster, a free take-away at the exhibition, serves as a souvenir of the lives of the Conjoined Twins, SAAG, Alberta History and of Will and Hutchinson themselves.
Scott Rogers + Paul Woodrow
After You’ve Gone
After You’ve Gone is Rogers and Woodrow’s first project together consisting of two distinct, but related installations - both immersive situations and both in response to the physical architecture of SAAG. In the two main galleries, mirrored spheres made from security domes are hung from the ceiling. These contemplative orbs are carefully positioned to reflect everything in the gallery serving as repositories for anything, or anyone, that can be seen.
In the multipurpose gallery, the viewer enters what is ostensibly an empty room. However, once the lights turn off the viewer is immersed in the eerie green glow of the photo-luminescent film that envelopes the walls. Any shadows cast on the walls of the space are briefly recorded as dark areas on the glowing film, while a series of found and collected objects are also arrayed in the space to create a kind of shadowy frieze.
Taken together, this pair of works constitutes two inverted possibilities: one which collects and compresses the space into its central nexus, the other which explodes the centre, leaving only the subtlest trace behind. With both projects there is a suggestion of a spatial reality that is posterior or anterior to the presence of the visitor.
Faye HeavyShield + Terrance Houle
With overlapping practices deeply engaged in place, language and community, HeavyShield and Houle are approaching their project for SAAG with the shared understanding that this intersection is not an unlikely one. HeavyShield has long been an inspiration to Houle, both as an artist and Blackfoot, sharing family histories that span generations.
For their project at SAAG, the artists speak of coming from their own work to a place that meets. HeavyShield has been invested in photographing the Belly Buttes nearby the town of Stand Off and the Blood Reserve. A significant landmark for the Blackfoot people, these buttes continue to serve as sites of navigation both physically and spiritually. This dialogue with place, spirit and body is one that demands a particular language not wholly based on the spoken word and is exemplified in HeavyShield’s images and accompanying audio track.
Houle similarly explores alternative systems of language in an effort to demonstrate alternative and expanded notions of communication. Four video performances and three pinhole photographs present portraits of the artist using Native signals and sign language from the book “Indian Signals and Sign Language” by George Fronval. Friend or Foe takes up this traditional form of language as though a lingua franca to communicate feelings, descriptions or observations from seemingly mundane sites around Calgary that are in fact historically and personally charged.
EW + F
The EW and F Exquisite Corpse Video Project
Making their debut appearance in On Your Marks, EW and F is a multi-generational collaborative group formed to convey messages of universal love and harmony without force-feeding viewers' spiritual content. E (Denton Fredrickson and Glen MacKinnon) removes Earth to produce a hole in the center of Alberta. W (Billy McCarroll and Denton Fredrickson) exhales Wind through their nostrils into noseflutes. F (Glen MacKinnon and Billy McCarroll) mows lawns with the assistance of Fire.
Exploiting all the varied permutations of the group and its synthesis, EW and F have documented these uncommon acts to produced an exquisite corpse video and chance sound composition outlining possible approaches to experimentation, mind expansion, and cosmic awareness.
On Your Marks is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and curated by Ryan Doherty. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.
Blair Brennan lives and works in Edmonton where he received a B.F.A. from the University of Alberta in 1981. His sculpture, installation work, photographs/photo-based works, drawings, book works and other works on paper have been exhibited nationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions.
Kris Lindskoog graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2001 and lives and works in Calgary. With a simplicity of means his drawings and installations frequently adopt text, wordplay, annagramming and colour to arrive at work at both witty and compelling. Recent exhibitions include Search Party!!!, Artcite; (TEXT), Propeller Centre; and, Super String, Stride Gallery.
David Foy and Jennifer Saleik both received their Fine Art Diplomas in 2003 from Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton. In 2004 they formed as the team Dave and Jenn. Together they went on to earn their BFAs from the Alberta College of Art and Design and have since been the recipients of many awards including the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Biennial Emerging Artist Award.
Ron Moppett is a painter living and working in Calgary, Alberta. Moppett attended the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary from 1963 to 1967, and the Instituto de Allende in Mexico in 1968. Drawing inspiration from a variety of historical and cultural styles, the artist offers a diverse view of pop culture and a glimpse into the "dailiness" of life.
Robin Arseneault received her MFA from the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (2005), and her BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design, Canada (1998). She has exhibited internationally, including Canada, the USA, Scotland, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and most recently Iceland.
M.N. Hutchinson is an artist that lives and works in Calgary. A professional photographer for 30 years he holds a Masters Degree in New Media from the University of Calgary and has been teaching since 1996. His interests are mainly lo-tech and provisional inventions into which humour has been known to creep.
John Will lives and works in Calgary and is a former Fulbright Scholar whose work is represented in various public and private collections. Prior to his retirement as a teacher he had taught in various colleges across Canada and the U.S. He has exhibited in over 100 group and one person exhibitions and was recently profiled in the Spring 2010 Canadian Art Magazine.
Scott Rogers is a Canadian visual artist who produces site-specific, collaborative, and conceptual projects. His work has been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally in Ireland, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Berlin. Scott is also a founding member of the Arbour Lake Sghool, a collaborative art project centred on a suburban home in Calgary.
Paul Woodrow attended the Vancouver School of Art and Concordia University in Montreal where he began working in a variety of inter-disciplinary activities, including performance art, installation video, painting and experimental music. Woodrow also works as part of the internationally renowned collaborative Einstein’s Brain Project.
Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Kainai of southern Alberta where she lives and works. She attended the Alberta College of Art and Design and her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada and the United States Her practice reflects her understanding of tradition as current and living; evident in recent works based on beadworking and installations that stem from a storytelling history.
Terrance Houle is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary media artist and a member of the Blood Tribe. A graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, Terrance Houle received his B.F.A in 2003. His work has been exhibited across Canada, parts of the United States, Australia, Europe and England. Houle lives and maintains his art practice and Aboriginal Youth Mentorship in Calgary, Alberta.
Mandy Espezel is a visual artist originally from Fort McMurray, Alberta. She received her BFA from the University of Alberta in 2007, where she majored in Art and Design, with a concentration in painting and drawing. Her work is concerned with an intuitive process of image formation that addresses emotional and psychological anxieties. She is currently a candidate for the 2011 MFA (Art) at the University of Lethbridge.
Dagmar Dahle has lived in Lethbridge since 1997 and is a professor in the Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge. Her work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions including the multi-venue exhibition Weaving Van Gogh. Dahle’s work and working process negotiates the intersections of art and craft, natural history and decorative art, constructions of nature and the social.
Denton Fredrickson's art practice explores relationships between analog and digital technologies, sound, objects, and architectural space. He completed a Multi-Disciplinary B.F.A. from the University of Lethbridge (2001) and an M.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2003). Denton currently works out of Lethbridge, Alberta where he teaches in the Art Department at the University of Lethbridge.
Billy J. McCarroll lives in Lethbridge, Alberta were he continues his practice in art and music. He immigrated to Canada in 1971 and has taught and served in various administrative positions as a member of the University of Lethbridge Faculty of Art. From procedural and geometric abstraction to appropriations from instructional golf manuals, McCarroll’s practice has been collected and exhibited extensively.
Glen MacKinnon is an artist and stagehand who divides his time between Lethbridge and Calgary. His work has been exhibited nationally and is held in numerous important collections. Born in Alberta in 1950, MacKinnon has never left the province.
