Rita McKeough
Rita McKeough, Fall 2004, pp. 168/172
"Outskirts" immersed viewers in a clamorous environment animated by motors, recorded sound, a rolling vehicle, constructed houses and immense digital prints. The overall effect was of controlled chaos, a psychic space of excess and disorientation. At its core was a performance work—enacted all day long, for 17 days straight. In it, a white-haired woman was dragged across the floor, groping and grasping a driverless, mechanized vehicle. She sprawled behind the life-size car chassis, body askew, hanging on to the bumper as the vehicle continuously, even rhythmically, collided with the walls of the gallery.
The woman was artist Rita McKeough, clad in black motorcycle gear, straining with exertion. Now in her early 50s, she has created audio installations and sculptural performances since the 1970s and is a veteran of early experimental sound work, collaborative punk operas and multimedia installations. Currently living in Halifax, McKeough teaches at NSCAD and has a steady history of producing a major project every year or two. She is a mentor to scores of younger artists interested in hybrid sculptural practices and the post-punk music scene.
Her latest show follows on a number of experimental works. In Bocca al Lupo—In the Mouth of the Wolf (1991), her all-female cast, dressed in leather, torn frocks and Doc Martens, enacted a carefully layered script within an elaborately constructed sculptural space. McKeough channels her commitment to social and environmental justice into non-linear, carnivalesque productions infused with healthy doses of absurd humour. She explores the theme of damage—to wildlife, neighbourhoods, the body—from rampant development or domestic abuse, but in surprising, compassionate and poetic ways.
McKeough usually works with a wide circle of participants. In "Outskirts," she worked with a team of musicians and technicians. The space of the Owens Art Gallery was separated in two: a black road bisected the gallery. On one side were four houses. On the other, a pseudo-forest suggested the countryside. Each house had a distinct identity, and each enclosed bizarre tableaux in which the natural world was constricted and subjected to various kinds of humiliations. Speakers emitted soundtracks of human voices singing deep laments and uttering animal growls, twitters and murmurings. Props such as stomping cartoon-bear feet, straining plastic toy dogs, a spilling water faucet and the smell of soap generated anxiety about domestic decor gone awry.
McKeough's own performance was a feat of strength and stamina. In addition to the vehicle ordeal, she also collected cigarette butts strewn about the space, then climbed a ladder and fed them into the treetops. The trees were wired to spit the butts back out onto the road. Efforts at cleaning up were futile. Her title serves as a double entendre suggesting disputed territories where suburban encroachment meets wilderness, where many of our current environmental battles are waged and lost. It also suggests the outer reaches of feminism, embodied by a white-haired motorcycle woman defying stereotypes and questioning our complicity in the ongoing debacle of ecological degradation.
Fall 2004
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