Review
LOCUS SUSPECTUS
Curated by Sandra Vida and Pauline Cummins
Runs until October 15
Truck Gallery (815 First St. S.W.)
For many artists, the video camera has become the modern-day equivalent of a diary. The difference is that, in the hands of video artists, the diary is cracked open and used as part of a wide-ranging discourse examining diverse points of view. Sometimes we’re curious, sometimes we’re disturbed, sometimes we may even learn something.
Locus Suspectus – Where the Hidden Comes to Light is the recently opened exhibition of videos from six Irish and six Canadian artists. Curated by Pauline Cummins and Sandra Vida, the collection has been assembled after being culled from hundreds of selections the two viewed in what amounted to a bi-continental search for videos that delve into the topic of gender.
Not surprisingly given the overarching theme of the show, Cummins and Vida first joined forces at a feminist art residence at The Banff Centre in 1992 where they produced the video work The Autonomous Eye. For Locus Suspectus, the curators have produced a detailed exhibition catalogue which provides an overview of each video and a biography of the artists involved in the project.
The two have also included notes that help to explain their motivations for mounting Locus Suspectus, in which they write, "At a starting point, we wanted to see how video artists currently see gender issues through the medium of video. Video is no longer a ‘new’ medium, it has changed and been changed by its practitioners, over the past three decades. Women’s status and point of view have also evolved, as feminism has impacted the context of art practice. How do women now ‘picture’ themselves (their identity, their social role, their sexuality, their ability to take action in the world) through their work?"
Arguably, video, more than any other art form, has provided women across the world with a powerful voice that was previously silenced or largely ignored by a male-dominated art establishment. Now, depending on your frame of reference, that voice is strengthened (or diluted) given the accessibility of relatively low-cost video equipment and its ease of use.
In Locus Suspectus (Latin for "uncanny space"), instead of another dreary diatribe on the virtues of feminism, Cummins and Vida have wisely allowed the individual artists to speak for themselves through their own works.
The first piece that greets viewers is Midwatch from Belfast-based artist Moira McIver. With the help of three large colour photographs and an accompanying 20-minute video, McIver presents viewers with representations of historical female figures from the 1800s – women who disguised themselves as men in order to work on merchant and military ships of the day.
In Overweight with Crooked Teeth, Canadian artist Shelley Niro uses video to challenge the tired stereotypes that have plagued First Nations people in Canada for far too long. This time Niro focuses her camera on her brother, who dresses up as a variety of characters, including the "Noble Savage," to prod viewers into realizing just how much staying power such insulting depictions have in our collective memory.
In addition to videos from women artists, the curators, presumably in a spirit of diversity, have included one male-female collaboration and one sole male artist. Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby of Toronto present the strange role-playing exercise Rapt and Happy and Mark Palmer from Dublin delivers a unique perspective on childbirth in his video From Infancy to Adulthood.
What could have easily been turned into a didactics field day is instead an idea-driven exhibition that begins with gender but encompasses far more. It’s a show that provides a version of life which is only revealed by these 12 artists after the camera is turned on. |
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