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Geneviève et Matthieu Les magiciens 2010 Detail / photo David Jhave Johnston |
J-MR: Upstairs from that was Martin Dufrasne who has installed this huge head on a pillow, which is actually meant to be his head, and then you have the ideas inside the head represented by watercolour paintings of clouds. He actually hunted clouds while he was in his residency. Inside of another room he had these little clouds on disco balls. It’s hard to describe but it was very beautiful. For him it was trying to show the imagination linked to an actual space.
The photographer Roberto Pellegrinuzzi is just up the street at the 19th-century general store. It is not only the one place to buy food in the village but it’s also a museum filled with all of these objects from the history of the general store. Roberto found this historical display so interesting that he decided not to make his work super-present but to simply include it in the space. Alongside two light-box photos of his mother, he’s showing a series of photos of vintage cameras installed in a very subtle fashion so you just discover these little pieces as you look around. You can even imagine that the cameras he’s photographed would be similar to the ones that would have taken the pictures of his mother or might have been sold at one time at this general store. For him, it’s about making a link to the actual space but also to his own history and this idea of the colony within himself. So it was more of an inner search, though it works well on many levels.
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Thérèse Mastroiacovo ici 2010 |
Thérèse Mastroiacovo has made lots of great little pieces that are installed throughout the village including these huge balloons that were floating above all of the exhibition spaces. When you’re at historical sites you always have these little didactic panels identifying “Here was this…” and “Here was that…”. After a while, Thérèse came to me and said, “What’s up with all of the 'ici'?" So she made these huge balloons and postcards based on this recurring idea that almost becomes absurd. Now “ici” or “here” can be taken to elsewhere. Because the sites are so close together and with all of those balloons floating above high in the sky you also have this Land Art aspect, which was unintentional, but works very well.
The town’s historic mill has videos by Mastroiacovo, Graeme Patterson and Milutin Gubash, who is showing two short works, one of which was shot in Grondines at one of the oldest mills in Canada, from 1635, I think. There’s also an installation by Kim Waldron of wall-mounted, taxidermied animal heads as well as a set of photos of her actually being the butcher. It’s not an activist or political work, it’s more about personal experience and her images have the raw beauty of a nature morte. One night on the opening weekend, she hosted a communal feast where she roasted a whole lamb. Perhaps fittingly, it rained and everyone ended up eating inside of the space among these mounted animal heads.
Finally, in the basement of the mill is an installation by Geneviève et Matthieu. They read everything in the museum and then created a kind of waterfall coming out of the wall fashioned from all kinds of trashy, colourful objects. For them there was this question of the mythology that surrounds historical spaces and also of going into a new place or culture where there’s always a part that you can’t understand and so it becomes magical or mythical. They also used those didactic panel texts for a beautiful performance on the opening weekend that created a new mythology for the site with artworks, lights and music.
And then, of course, everybody partied.
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Milutin Gubash The Old Windmill 2010 Video still |
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