Teenage Kicks
"Teenage Kicks" by Randall Anderson, Winter 2006, p. 82
On the occasion of Centre Clark’s 18th birthday, Mathieu Beauséjour curated a small but dense show under the title “Teenage Kicks.” This grouping of works by Jo-Anne Balcaen, Shaun Doyle and Mally Mallinson, G. B. Jones, Alain Paiement, Dan Graham, Jamie Reid and Stephen Schofield explores various manifestations of that difficult, hormone-hazed transition into adulthood. The art ranges from heavyhanded and as flat-footed as a teenager can be to poetically subtle, even abstract.
Most people wouldn’t want to repeat their teenage years. It’s a tumultuous time in which behaviour is determined more by biology, fear and peer pressure than good sense. In the developed world, teens are a huge marketing block that, since the Second World War, has grown to represent a much-targeted pool of disposable income. Add to this the instability of identities in formation and you have a volatile demographic. The exhibition just scratches the surface of its curatorial premise, providing a tantalizing glimpse of what this line of research could yield.
G. B. Jones presents a series of pencil drawings much like those made by teens in their notebooks during class. Awkward and almost badly drawn, the drawings depict groupings rife with peer pressure and the signs of belonging.
Jo-Anne Balcaen contributes two works, each getting at the irrational and finite thinking/non-thinking of the average teenager. The End is a neon sign that hangs in front of you to shed light on a world of no return with no other option—only the inevitable. In Screaming Girls, a three-minute video loop, we see a crowd of young girls from the early 1960s caught in the hysterical throes of screaming for a rock star, movie star or other teenage idol. There’s no sound, only an intense, silent scream charged with mayhem.
Stephen Schofield’s Cat Bites Gravel is an object of benign prickliness that catches you by surprise. An almost transparent cat made of open safety pins welded together hangs from the wall, suspended by a twisted and gnarled intestinal tract of metal that runs from its mouth through its body and out the anus, where it forms a wall-mount bracket. Hinting at the potential for violence behind “Teenage Kicks,” this pet, having become roadkill under the wheels of adult authority, looks like it could come back to draw blood—if not handled with care.
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