>>PREVIEW
EXPOSED… THE OTHER SIDE OF STAMPEDE
Runs until July 30
QUAB Gallery
"I’ve been asking a lot of people if they were born in April, nine months after Stampede," says Jim Jewitt, manager of QUAB Gallery. This month’s exhibition of artwork is titled Exposed… The Other Side of Stampede. "Did you know there was a survey done that said that one of four people admits to cheating on their spouse during Stampede?" says Jewitt.
The Calgary Stampede is known for mini-donuts, white cowboy hats, chuck wagon races and tourists. What Stampede is also know for, but is not mentioned in the tourist brochures, is the carnival atmosphere, the drunken bacchanal, girls in assless chaps and muscled wannabe cowboys showing lots of skin. It’s the 10 days of sin, sex and debauchery that QUAB Gallery’s Exposed wants to put on view.
"A lot of people thought this show was an anti-Stampede collection of art," says Jewitt, "but that is far from the truth. These works are meant to explore the carnal and the commercial sides of what happens in Calgary during Stampede. We want to remove the blinders from the audience to reveal the perception of the dark and the twisted, a celebration of what Calgary Stampede has become – the carnival."
Jewitt admits there has been shock and horror from some of the gallery’s patrons this month, but also gratitude and laughter from tourists from larger centres.
The art of Exposed is varied in media and context, but united in a dark and sly exposure of the Stampede mentality. Marie-Josee Roy’s paintings are the most hallucinatory works on display. Her Cowgirl employs simple etching ink on aluminum and shockingly recalls H.R. Giger’s works, but they are monstrosities without Giger’s sense of bio-mechanical abomination.
Jerome Prieur’s pieces are among the funniest. His Sad Country Singer and Flat Tire and Dumped Country Singer are savagely hilarious. Painted in the style of Christian icon paintings with a brilliant irony, they mock the martyred serious pose of the idealized cowboy. His Cowtrix’s Best Act at Club Gentille is a portrait of Grand Guignol meets the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. Imagine still life with dominatrix and car battery with willing cowboy. It really is hilarious.
Tearing the veneer from the more commercial side of Stampede are the works of local artist Munkaspeni. His contribution to Exposed is a series entitled Munkaspeni’s Adventures in Cowtown, with each painting focused on a particular facet of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. His Welcome to the Freakshow is the sideshow of Stampede, the crass and the vulgar that could be set to the tune of Tom Wait’s "Step Right Up." Munkaspeni’s Adventures series is cutting and funny as well as engaging. Stampede Barbie, Drunken Rampage, and Baby Boom are all meant to deflate the fatuous hypocrisy of portraying the Calgary Stampede as an innocent 10-day Disneyland.
QUAB Gallery’s Exposed is both light-hearted and serious in content and message. The Calgary Stampede is not for everyone – many people actually schedule out-of-town trips for its 10-day run. If you find yourself wanting more from art than crying rodeo clowns and paintings of cowboy gladiators noble in defeat, then mosey down to QUAB and you’ll find things you always knew were lurking beneath white Stetsons. |
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