| ’Tis the season for graduations. And for art students, graduating shows. It's an opportunity for Calgarians to catch a glimpse of artists just embarking on their careers, and to support this city's emerging cultural practitioners. The energy and enthusiasm of these artists is palpable, with fresh ideas sprouting around every corner.
Alberta College of Art and Design's 2007 Graduating Exhibition (running until May 5) is the largest of the lot. The Illingworth Kerr gallery plays host to those graduates nominated for the annual Board of Governors Award, while students from each department have taken over studio spaces throughout the building. More ACAD student and faculty work can also be seen at Splendide Mendax, an exhibition at the Uptown Stage and Screen's Marquee Room until May 7.
One of the most striking pieces is Hilary Knutson's You Must Be This Tall To Ride at the entrance to Illingworth Kerr. A giant version of the traditional red velvet rope seen in museums, complete with two tall chrome pillars, it is so large that the rope hangs over six feet high. A playful response to the elitist attitudes of some cultural institutions, this installation makes it clear that all are welcome.
This playful attitude continues inside the gallery. Craig Friesen's Canadian Assemble uses an old fairground game to poke fun at simplistic notions of national identity. Viewers are invited to throw beanbags at homemade targets in a crowd of wall-mounted Canadiana that includes painted wooden figures of Mounties, moose, wolves and a creepy man wearing a bear head. The first target is a hockey goal on which different areas of the net are given point values. With the second, the object of the game is to land your beanbag in the mouth of either a trapper, a Mountie, or a lumberjack.
John Antoski's installation A Short Story outlines a world populated by strange, heartbreaking little creatures made of wooden blocks. The scene is dominated by a pair of tall lollipop-shaped trees cut from wood grain patterned vinyl adhered to the wall. At its base, a tough looking character waits. The block of his body is painted like a black T-shirt and a nameplate from an old Mercury Marquis is affixed to his chest. Three arms with flexed biceps cut from plywood are nailed to one side of his torso.
At Merge, the University of Calgary's Bachelor of Fine Arts graduating show (running until June 8), visual artist and singer/songwriter Marigold Santos is working in a similar vein to Antoski. Her installation is housed in a three-sided sitting room built on a child-like scale. Crouching down to sit in a low orange armchair, the viewer is immersed in a delicately animated black and white world where teapots and teacups come to life. Santos's film is accompanied by a sweet, folksy soundtrack heard through headphones. The room is like a strange washed-out living room, decorated with family portraits of cats, shelves filled with miniature tea sets and a crowd of dolls arranged like a strange, sad cast of characters.
This exhibition has less of the playful energy of the ACAD show, but the more serious tone highlights some remarkably assured voices. Serena Staples's paintings are one example. Made using square cedar planks arranged in a grid pattern, the artist carves, burns and burnishes the wood to create rich, dark panels with smooth, rounded corners. These are then painted with images of cells and other microscopic structures, as well as bees and honeycombs. The objects seem to possess a vast history, like artifacts long buried.
While at the Nickle Arts Museum, be sure to see Suzanne Franks’s exhibition, Smother (running until May 18). In contrast to new graduates just beginning to find their voices, Franks is a mid-career artist who has developed a unique visual vocabulary. Using industrial safety materials to craft large-scale, obsessive installations, the artist explores the emotional and intellectual contradictions of motherhood. Fortress is a beautiful but ominous play structure made from clear vinyl sheeting perforated with thousands of heavy aluminum grommets. In Life Boat/Life Preserver, Franks has constructed a raft from hundreds of handmade orange nylon teddy bears and an oversized life jacket that smothers the wearer in outstretched arms.
At Truck, C'mon, C'mon by Joanne Balcaen (running until May 12) examines the emotional substance of fandom. The main feature is silent, slow motion footage of a crowd of young women at a 1960s concert. At the beginning, their body language is subtle – they twirl their hair and lick their bottom lips, never taking their eyes off the spectacle. Soon they are crying, shouting, jumping and reaching out toward the stage. Slowed and edited this way, Balcaen draws sharp parallels to ecstatic religious and sexual experience. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.