Rewind: Finding Camp X: Contemporary Considerations of an Enigma
Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
During the Second World War, a secret military camp where American, Canadian and British allies came to learn about codes, explosives and espionage was set up on the outskirts of Oshawa, Ontario. Known as Camp X, it trained many agents, including, briefly, Ian Fleming, the James Bond novelist. In 2002, Oshawas Robert McLaughlin Gallery mounted an exhibition that explored some of its implications. Guest-curated by Gary Greenwood, with artists Steven Frank, Anitra Hamilton, Nina Levitt and Sean McQuay, it imaginatively engaged ideas of memory, information coding and the struggles of wartime.
Levitts interactive installation, Little Breeze, made in collaboration with Nicholas Stedman, presented a projection of a dissolving and reforming network of womens faces and keyboard letters along with a grouping of vintage suitcases that contained motion-activated recordings. The recordings interspersed Maurice Chevalier singing Every little breeze/seems to whisper Louise... with anecdotal information on female spies, including Violette Szabo, an agent whose code-name was Louise. When the suitcases were opened, the projection image changed and began to show random clips from a vintage spy film. The complex interaction was riveting and the pieces rich content and technical virtuosity framed a broad context for the other works.
Accentuating tension between fragility and destruction, Hamilton showed eggshell mosaics depicting bombs and aerial sites in natural tones that uncannily resembled camouflage patterns. Adjacent colour-bar paintings suggested ranking stripes and other military insignia. McQuay dealt with issues of concealment and secrecy. In one work a poemsteal away/the dark hours/traveling incognito was reproduced in Morse code. In another, the artists silhouette was concealed in a thicket of tree branches from the Camp X site. In the last, oversized, overlapping letters made indecipherable code messages.
Franks work, Plan B, extended across the gallery floor and consisted of a hand press spilling forth mylar banner material, in imitation of the printing process. Both elements were salvaged items with remarkable provenances. The press was used during the war at Oshawas Alger Press to print a secret document called The Defence of Britain, which detailed instructions for camp trainees on forming an underground resistance movement should the Germans invade the country. The banner was printed with it, and on its underside with Manhattan street names intended for the New York Transit Authority. Frank links the objects to a passage from Winston Churchills famous Plan B speech of 1940, which rolls out across the gallery floor: we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until in Gods good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.
The exhibition, while recalling the charged wartime history of Camp X, never broaches the archival function of a war museum. The project offered not artifacts but imaginative re-creations, involving themes of conflict and subterfuge that make it relevant to the postSeptember 11 temper of our times.
Spring 2003
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