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8/3/2005

Time inside the image

Art Gallery Bishop, Lennoxville, QC

This four-week festival will explore film, video, and performance as art forms that are time-based. Activities and workshops will include a screening of hand- processed, hand-painted, and camera-less films, video art, and on-site interactive performances.

The exhibition presents a selection of work by Canadian visual artists who, through film, performance and installation, make us question how the element of time has changed the way we read works of art.

The exhibition and short film series are curated by Vicky Chainey Gagnon. In the gallery space will be featured a series of sculptures using woven film strips by Canadian artist-filmmaker Richard Kerr. An experimental 16mm film screening will be presented in the gallery space on March 23rd: Textured Traces, explores handmade films and will be followed with a talk on avant-garde filmmaking.

During the opening reception a performance by Winnipeg-based media artist Daniel Barrow will be presented: Looking for Love in the Hall of Mirrors. Since 1993, Barrow has used overhead projectors to relay ideas and narrate stories, referring to his practice as "graphic performance, or live illustration."

Lastly, this project will showcase a performance and workshop by Canadian artist Shawna Dempsey, thanks to a collaboration with the Bishops Drama department. Dempsey is a multidisciplinary artist who has created a body of internationally acclaimed work addressing feminist, lesbian, and social concerns with biting wit.

Since the mid-nineties, Montreal-based artist Richard Kerr’s films have literally slid right off the screen. During this time, Kerr began producing objects and installations out of film stills, often recycled from his own out-takes. In his studio work, film has been released from its dependence on the projector, and as a result, from the rhythmic beat of 24 frames-per-second. Film becomes a malleable, two-dimensional surface in Kerr's recent recompositions of 35mm Hollywood movie trailers that he reclaimed from a drive-in cinema in Saskatchewan. The ‘found footage’ has been transformed into a dual-projector slide installation and sculptures made of woven film.

Kerr's direct approach to filmmaking, parallels the artistic practice of filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who often made short films using camera-less techniques like collage, etching, scratching and painting. In the hand-painted The Dante Quartet (which we will be screening as a part of Textured Traces on March 23rd, at 6:30 pm), Brakhage draws attention to the surface of the film by making use of it as a canvas. The blur of color and scratched inter-titles in The Dante Quartet amplify the physical presence of the film as an object moving through a projector, and breaks the filmic illusion of transparency. We can imagine the series of individual 'paintings' moving through time. In films that uses materialist strategies, like The Dante Quartet, the trace of the artist becomes part of the overall meaning of the work.

In artist Daniel Barrow’s performances, stories are brought to life via an overhead projector, Barrow's voiceover and the animation of drawings he has created on mylar transparencies. Barrow's narratives orbit around ideas of beauty versus ugliness; genius versus idiocy; and the balancing of one's talents with advancing physical shortcomings. The work he presents at the Foreman Art Gallery, Looking for Love in the Hall of Mirrors mixes all of these elements into the story of a foppish man, who leaves the farm and moves to the city to pursue love and artistic success.

In artist Shawna Dempsey’s performance, Lesbian Park Rangers, she and collaborator Lorri Millan break down the line between artist and audience by intervening directly into public spaces and allowing humor to play a critical role. In full uniform, Dempsey and Millan patrol 'the wilds', challenging the general public’s ideas of sexuality, tourism, recreation, and the 'natural' environment. Dempsey and Millan introduce a lesbian presence into the landscape and educate by means of brochures, instructional video, a handbook and field guide, all the while demarcating the performance through their presence.

Whether through film, installation art or performance, contemporary artists continue to prove that finding meaning depends not on a single perceptual standpoint, but on deciphering through an unstable, and ever-changing network of relations. The time-base art in the exhibit Time Inside the Image reminds us of this challenge.

BIOGRAPHIES

Richard Kerr is an artist-filmmaker known for his wide-ranging body of work, an œuvre that, since the early seventies, has explored a multiplicity of subjects in varying genres. Kerr expanded his practice in the mid-nineties to include installation work and object-making. His recent studio work includes Industry/Industrie (Cinémathèque québécoise, 2004). Richard Kerr is an associate professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, Montréal, QC.

Daniel Barrow is a Winnipeg-based media artist, working in performance, video and installation. Since 1993, Barrow has used the overhead projector to relay ideas and short narratives, producing and adapting comic book narratives to a manual form of animation. By projection, layering and manipulating images, Barrow creates hybrid forms comprised of film, drawing and performance which he describes as live illustration. He has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad.

Shawna Dempsey is a Winnipeg-based artist working in performance and video. Dempsey and her collaborator Lorri Millan have created numerous live performance pieces including Mary Medusa, Arborite Housedress, and Lesbian Love Story of the Lone Ranger and Tonto. They are best known for their films and videos. Performance artifacts, films and videos by Dempsey and Millan are held in collections including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, and colleges and universities throughout North America.

Vicky Chainey Gagnon is a curator and writer specializing in time-based contemporary art. She is completing a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from York University, with a specialization in the history and practice of avant-garde filmmaking. She holds a B.F.A in Film Studies and Art History from Concordia University.

The following activities are FREE and in English

OPENING RECEPTION ACTIVITIES

Opening Reception – March 9th, 2005 from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Artist Talk with artist Richard Kerr at 4:00 pm
Performance by artist Daniel Barrow at 5:45 pm

EXHIBITION ACTIVITIES

Performance by artist Shawna Dempsey:
Tuesday, March 15th, at 5:30 pm Molson Fine Arts, Room 010
Workshop with Shawna Dempsey:
Friday, March 18th, at 1:00 pm Reservations required
Artist Talk with Shawna Dempsey:
Thursday, March 17th, at 5:30 pm Foreman Art Gallery
Artist Talks with Daniel Barrow:
Tuesday, March 8th, at 8:30 am - Thursday, March 10 at 5:30 pm Foreman Art Galler

CINÉ-CLUB ACTIVTIES

As part of the Foreman Art Gallery Ciné-Club Series, we asked curator Vicky Chainey Gagnon to suggest a film to accompany the exhibition Time Inside the Image. Among the collection of 16mm experimental short films she chose are hand-painted works, films made via camera-less animation and films processed entirely by hand. Not to be missed!

Film Screening: Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005 at 6:30 pm Foreman Art Gallery
Textured Traces 55 minute running time

Cooper Bridge/Fight (Christina Battle, 2002, 16mm, 3 minutes)
Breath (Kelly Egan, 2003, 16mm, 3 minutes)
The Dante QUARTET (Stan Brakhage, 1987, 16mm, 8 minutes)
Light Magic (Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, 2001, 16mm, 3 minutes)
hardwood procesS (David Gatten, 1996, 16mm, 14 minutes)
THE VIEW NEVER CHANGES (John Price, 1996, 16mm, 6 minutes)
In the Garden (Larissa Fan, 2003, 16mm, 2 minutes)
Sheep (Carl Brown, 1991, 16mm, 7 minutes)
Handtinting (Joyce Weiland, 1967, 16mm, 5.5 minutes)

Talk by artist-filmmaker Richard Kerr on handmade film techniques following screening of Textured Traces

Image: Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan, Lesbian National Parks and Services, 1997

AGBU - Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop's University
Rue College Street
Lennoxville, QC
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, from 12 noon to 5 p.m. and evenings when Centennial Theatre is open.

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