"Vera Frenkel as The Friend", still, Vera Frenkel, The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden: Her Room in Paris, Part 1, 1979. Purchase, Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund, 2004 (46-043). Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Myfanwy MacLeod, The Mascot, 1999, mixed-media costume. Purchase, Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund, 2003 (46-046). Credit: www.bernardclarkphoto.com
Exhibitions
Telling Stories, Secret Lives
Contemporary Feature and Samuel J. Zacks Galleries, and Etherington House
15 January - 30 April 2006
Telling Stories, Secret Lives is inspired by an upsurge in the use of narrative in contemporary art. Discourses in art criticism, enthralled as they have been with conceptualism in recent years, have tended to suppress the story lines implicit or explicit in many works of art; today, the use of compelling narrative motives is in the foreground of art practices. This show offers a refreshing reconsideration of installation and sculptural works that takes into account their narrative potential by extending and making tangible the web of imaginative trajectories they embody.
Many of the large-scale pieces in this exhibition recently entered the Art Centre's collection, and have not previously been shown in Kingston. The works span from the room-sized, multi-media The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden: Her Room in Paris, Part 1 (1979) by internationally-renowned artist Vera Frenkel to The Mascot (1999), a fragmented sculpture/performance costume by Vancouver-based artist Myfanwy MacLeod. Area residents will welcome the chance to see Evolution is but a Long and Complicated Wish... or, it's about Time! (1981) by former Kingston artist and teacher Terry Pfliger. Spanning three galleries, this exhibition also presents works by major Canadian artists, including Dorothy Cameron, Robin Collyer, Ian Carr-Harris, and Sandra Meigs.
In order to excavate latent meaning and interpretive possibilities, the Art Centre invited a handful of the fine writers living in this region to view the works and develop short responsive texts. The resulting pieces are presented in the exhibition. Through prose and poetry, ranging in mood from startling humour to sober reflection, the writers have taken fascinating approaches from counterpoint to empathetic engagement with their subject work. The participating writers are Jill Battson, Steven Heighton, Helen Humphreys, Daniel David Moses, Diane Schoemperlen, Merilyn Simonds, and Carolyn Smart. An illustrated publication with texts by contributing writers, an essay by exhibition curator Jan Allen, and entries by Steven Matijcio accompanies Telling Stories, Secret Lives.
Jan Allen
The Art Centre acknowledges with gratitude funding from the City of Kingston Healthy Community Fund and the Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund for this project.