Rubber spiders, sheets of lino, a Herod’s shopping bag and rose petals are just some of the many interesting and re-used materials one will find in works gracing all four floors of the Glenbow Museum as part of the Made in Calgary: the 1990s show.
This is the fourth instalment of a series that highlights the exciting things that were being created in Calgary each of the last five decades.
The current exhibit was curated by Nancy Tousley, art critic extraordinaire who lists Senior Art Writer for the Calgary Herald and Critic in Residence at ACAD on her impressive CV.
"There’s a lot of unusual material in this exhibition," she says. "There is also a lot of colour and rich material."
Indeed large and bold seem to be a central theme of the art that came out of the city in the decade best known for angst and grunge. But you will find little of that mood reflected here in the pieces on display February 8th to May 4th as part of the Made in the 1990s exhibit.
"The show has two kind of main streams, which doesn’t mean that everything here follows one or the other," Tousley describes. "The ’90s was a great time for installation work in the city. It was also a time when artists were expanding...in painting and in sculpture."
The exhibit begins in the lobby with two sculptures: the first a piece composed of two lavatory sinks by well-known Calgary sculptor Gordon Ferguson; and the second, entitled "Arcade", is two vending machines filled with artist postcards that one can purchase for a twoonie.
All of the artists featured in these machines were artists who participated in Graceland – a junkyard venue that arose in the ‘80s, which provided a source of materials and a place to showcase performance and other art pieces for a vast array of artists in Calgary.
"Graceland became ... an important spot for making art," Tousley says.
John Will may have been one of these frequenters. His work in this show covers two full walls – 200 small paintings that equate to one large piece. Many of the squares boast the names of other artists – colleagues – featured in this show or those of decades past; even Tousley’s name appears on a painting.
"John caricatures the people he represents," the curator describes. She says this work is autobiographical, evoking the essence of a community that existed in that decade.
Thus the sculptural piece "Sisters" shares the room, as it symbolizes an Aboriginal community to its creator, Faye HeavyShield. Pairs of ivory-coloured heels face outward in a circular formation. Unless you look intently, you may miss the cloven hooves indented into the toes.
HeavyShield’s earthy, folk-like sculptures pop out throughout the exhibit, drawing the viewer away from some of the colour and back to the shades of the earth.
Perhaps the most hard-hitting piece will be the multi-media installation created by Joane Cardinal-Schubert that resides on the third floor of the museum. Joane passed away in September of 2009, thus it is her husband, Mike Schubert, and son, also an artist who worked closely with Joane, who have taken the materials that compose the installation from out of their attic to re-create "The Lesson" here.
"I like this version of it more than any other version we have put on," he says, noting the ample space does the theme of the piece justice.
The installation looks like a classroom: books and apples sit on rigid chairs. Two of the walls are painted black and written upon with chalk. One of these is a ‘Memory Wall’, and scribed upon it are the names of persons and events to, and through, injustice has been done to the Native people.
The room is sobering, but essential as the horrid reality of what happened in these residential schools is slowly coming to light.
Three other installations that were considered the big three to be put on at the Glenbow during the ’90s are given representation on the second floor. A large photograph and video footage of Rita McKeough’s "Take it to the Teeth" is displayed in the same room it was originally performed.
Next to it is a photo of the "Divine Comedy", a multi-media installation that was put on by Eric Cameron and includes three of his ‘thick’ paintings, that of a pillow, a shoe, and a phone book.
And finally a photograph from "Einstein’s Brain/Furnace" – a collaborative effort produced by Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow that began in 1996 and is still ongoing – is the third on this wall. In its original installation the head displayed was shrouded in nodes that when touched would project varying images onto a wall. Clips from this installation will be available to view.
Dunning’s "Double Dutch" project is also part of the show, though it is displayed on a different floor. Dunning tweaked a photograph of a Dutch landscape to make it look more Dutch, and pieced it with books we are unable to read. His work is layered in meaning, though what that meaning is exactly is hard to decipher, much like these volumes that sit on a shelf.
Works by Greg Payce, whom Tousley acclaims as being "one of the best ceramic workers in the whole country" happily grace a wall and display case, clearly demonstrating his impressive craft and attention to detail.
The artist has been making ceramics for nearly four decades and currently teaches at ACAD.
Laura Vickerson has painstakingly recreated her visually penetrating sculptural piece "Shades of Nature", composed of rose petals on organza.
Ron Moppet appears again with an electric mural of sorts that can’t help but arouse a smile, and around the corner is an installation that makes one feel as though they have stepped within a kaleidoscope.
Leila Sujir’s "My Two Grandmothers" is a striking blend of silk and cotton quilt, photographs and 26 brightly lit monitors.
"When she did this in the ’90s it was kind of technologically advanced," says Tousley. "This piece is about bringing her grandmothers and their cultures together."
Sujir does this using clever images of patchwork or cloths exemplifying the Scottish and Indian backgrounds from which she has been cut from.
A beautiful glass and wood cabinet from the Glenbow’s own reserve is displaying Elizabeth LeMoine’s intriguing tiny pieces with big effects.
"Her skill is just incredible, and her ...spirit of invention," says the curator.
LeMoyne has made beautiful little garments out of shopping bags and plastics, used envelopes and facial tissue.
Dipping into the macabre and odd, M.N. Hutchinson’s "The Book of the Damned" offers a funny retreat into the extra-terrestrial and occult. Forty black and white panels are assembled in which ‘Hutch’ appears often as "a little Martian" and if one steps back, the dark outline of a flying saucer is visible in the centre of the piece.
In this same room we are invited to sit and listen to the intimate interview Gisele Amantea recorded and used as a memorial to her deceased parents entitled "and sorrow come near them no more". A monitor sits on a table surrounded by flocked black fabric, the kind of fabric work the artist was known for.
"It has this very beautiful, stately, funereally quality," says Tousley.
Inadvertently Amantea’s mother was once a guard at the Glenbow Museum.
Running alongside the Made in the 1990s show are the Worn to be Wild: The Black Leather Jacket and Bryan Adams Exposed exhibits, featuring two areas of Adams’s work in photography. The first grouping will highlight the portraits he is famed for taking of his friends and colleagues in the industry, while the second will offer the stark visages of young British soldiers who have come back from war.
Adams’s show will run February 23rd to May 4th, while both Made in the 1990s and the Black Leather Jacket will launch Saturday February 8th.
