October 2, 2009 (Calgary, Alberta) – The Alberta College of Art + Design is thrilled to present the 2009 Fall Exhibition at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. This fall, the IKG launches a series of exhibitions, events and talks, providing an examination of the issues associated with the idea of the North and related ideas of the West. Owing primarily to issues of climate change, sovereignty and the Alberta oil sands, the North and Canadian West suddenly seem so much more familiar and tangible to the average citizen living south of the Arctic Circle. This fall, the IKG examines this with two innovative works: Glenn Ligon’s Death of Tom and Untitled (Minnesota Massacre), and John Gerrard’s Grow Finish Unit (Elkhart, Kansas) 2008, and Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas) 2007.
In his video installation Death of Tom, New York-based artist Glenn Ligon sought to recreate the look of the Porter-Edison production of Uncle Tom's Cabin . Projected on a single screen, the resulting DVD focuses on the mechanics of the (re)making of the original production and the failure of representation. Renowned jazz pianist Jason Moran composed the original score for Death of Tom based on the vaudeville song “Nobody”, and hewill perform his composition live in the Stanford Perrott Lecture Hall at the exhibitions opening. Ligon’s second piece, Untitled (Minnesota Massacre), addresses a set of 42 painted reportage panels from the late 19th century, depicting scenes from the infamous 1862 uprising by the Sioux nation.
In Grow Finish Unit (near Elkhart, Kansas) 2008, Irish artist John Gerrard presents two media works. The first documents a functional agricultural reality that reduces the relationship between farmer and farmed to a purely technical, almost contactless process, using a viewer-controlled camera with permits oversight by the work's audience. Gerrard’s second work in the show, Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas) 2007 is the extension of a single archival photographic image of a storm dating from the 1930’s American Dust Bowl. Its production involved the virtual reconstruction, based on hundreds of the artist’s own photographs and reels of film, of a ten-mile square section of Texan landscape close to the town of Dalhart, a landscape dotted with windmills, farms and fences. The Dust Bowl event, which Gerrard associates strongly with the synthesis of oil and agriculture in the early 20th century, has been identified as a central player in the economic slump of that time, the Great Depression. No moving images of the original storm are known to exist.
Glenn Ligon: Death of Tom and Untitled (Minnesota Massacre)
John Gerrard: Grow Finish Unit (Elkhart, Kansas) 2008, and Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas) 2007
ACAD’s Illingworth Kerr Gallery
October 9 – December 12, 2009
Opening Reception: 5:00 – 7:00 pm | October 9, 2009
Jason Moran In Concert 6:30 pm | Stanford Perrott Lecture Hall
Alberta College of Art + Design
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For more information or to arrange an interview:
AnneMarie Dorland, Director of Communications
t. 403.284.7656 c. 403.472.2322 e. AnneMarie.Dorland@acad.ca
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