Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Ill Wind. Collection of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Image Courtesy of the artists
Exhibitions
Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge: Working Culture
The Davies Foundation, Contemporary Feature, and Frances K Smith Galleries
8 March - 8 June
This overview of the extraordinary art practice of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge features a selection of major photographic projects spanning their thirty year career of active engagement with organised labour and a spate of issues emerging in the wake of globalising economies. The show begins with their artistic breakthrough of 1975, with the "It's still privileged art" drawings, when the artists - under the influence of Art and Language and the nascent conceptual art movement - turned from formalist art-making to social engagement, and from solo expression to committed artistic collaboration, to set a prescient and exemplary course of investigation of social aesthetics. Condé and Beveridge's formulation of left-perspective discourses and their innovations in artistic form reflect current practices in which art-making is understood as a symbolic articulation of conditions, and, perhaps more importantly, as a tool of community formation.
In conjunction with the exhibition the Art Centre also presents an off-site installation in recognition of International Women’s Day, March 8, Work in Progress, a series of six 2-sided banners on the history of women’s work since 1895. Each decade (from 1895 to 2006) is represented by a woman posed in a period kitchen. In these tableaux, a window reveals political struggles, a calendar depicts predominant labour sectors in which women were employed, and a family photo reflects socially-affirmed norms of domestic life. The banners were commissioned for the 2006 Contact Toronto Photography Festival and were previously installed on the exterior of 469 King Street West, Toronto.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 160-page monograph published with NSCAD University Press documenting key photographic projects and including essays by leading writers and critics, an artist's biography and project chronology. Class Works, edited by Bruce Barber, with contributions by Jan Allen, D'Arcy Martin, Declan McGonagle, Clive Robertson, Allan Sekula, Dot Tuer, and Karl Beveridge and Carole Condé, is scheduled for release in August 2008.
On Saturday 8 March at 2 pm, the exhibition will open with a panel discussion on art and critical engagement, featuring Dr Kirsty Robertson, Dot Tuer and Clive Robertson in conversation with the artists, moderated by Pat Sullivan, followed by a reception to 4:30 pm.
Jan Allen