April 15, 2010 | 2:00 - 4:00 PM
IKG Prep Room
Refreshments available. Free admission, everyone welcome.
Featuring panelists: Paul Becher, Richard Boulet, Travis Ogle and Adam Tindale
Moderated by Wayne Baerwaldt, Director/Curator, Exhibitions, ACAD.
Cultural producers spend an inexorable amount of time revisiting loss and acknowledging it in art and design as a way of coming to terms with the present. They elicit change by engaging dominant cultural paradigms that are open to investigation and critical questioning. In the process of investigation many artists and designers engage notions of nostalgia and sentimentality that dominate a living culture in order to create the language of cutting edge art forms that are too easily marginalized or ignored.
Revisioning the cultural past is a way of acknowledging the things we may have lost without even knowing it. Artists and designers working in various media dig deep and return to a broad range of activities that revisit myriad forms of loss. Activities can include the restaging of traditional tribal ceremonies and the remaking of Aboriginal artifacts, or the preservation and re-visioning of early-20th century mountain architecture. In each case there are shades of difference between paying homage to the original, traditional ideas, ways and forms in art or design, and those that produce “cover art”.
What meanings and values are at stake in each form? Is one a parody and the latter a mere pastiche, as cultural critic Frederic Jameson would assert? Which approaches to dreaming and creating are more critically acceptable than others in Canadian art and design circles, and why? Making It Contemporary covers the artistic extremes of high and low media with examples of handicrafts alongside cutting-edge digital imaging and audio art.
Calgary architect Paul Thomas Becher utilizes vernacular forms of architecture as vital reference points for generating architectural outcomes that not only contextually fit within their surroundings, but are contemporary in their interpretation and meaning. He describes his work as a form of Conceptual Realism. Most projects have involved reusing an existing building with a focus reflects an uncompromising tendency of detailing project designs meticulously based on current building materials and technologies.
Richard Boulet’s recent exhibition of fifty mixed media works was organized by and presented at the IKG. His practice is a multifaceted one that includes mixed-media drawings and fibre sculptures incorporating quilting and cross-stitching techniques that are intricately attached to mental recovery. Boulet’s work has probed subjects including his personal history of schizophrenia and references homelessness, psychosis, crisis intervention, family issues, medication, and coping strategies. By providing this context, Boulet feels there is as much consideration paid to recovery as to pre-diagnosis hardships.
Travis Ogle is a rancher and road engineer based in Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan. He is also a noted wood carver and makes detailed replicas of Sioux war clubs, arrows, bows, deep skin sheaths and other objects. He will talk about the importance of replication and the concepts that inform his approach to contemporary craft.
Adam Tindale is an electronic drummer and digital instrument designer. He is a Permanent Instructor of Interaction Design in the Media Arts and Digital Technologies area at the Alberta College of Art and Design. Adam performs on his EDrumset: a new electronic instrument that utilizes physical modeling and machine learning with an intuitive physical interface. He completed a Bachelor of Music at Queen's University, a Masters of Music Technology at McGill University and an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Music, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Victoria.
For more information contact ACAD Assistant Curator, Jennifer McVeigh at 403 284 7633 or email jennifer.mcveigh@acad.ca.
MAKING IT CONTEMPORARY is generously co-sponsored by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Alberta College of Art + Design.
