Graham Gillmore: Rejection Letters Redux
Graham Gillmore Zero Intent... 2009
“Refusalon,” the title of BC artist Graham Gillmore’s latest exhibition at Vancouver’s Monte Clark Gallery, is a wry reversal of the phrase “Salon des Refusés,” originally the title of a 19th-century exhibition of paintings rejected by the official Paris Salon. It is a fitting title for a body of work that uses cryptic turns of phrase and a peculiar circular logic to examine rejection letters as its subject matter. Gillmore, who is best known for colourful, minimalist, text-based paintings that offer punning, confessional passages, has here shifted towards more opaque phrases that seem like inversions of familiar idioms. In Zero Intent..., for instance, a declarative statement about “stained-family-linen” evokes worn clichés about airing one’s dirty laundry, while the large-scale Rejection Letter offers a bureaucratically worded refusal missive. Gillmore’s playful investigations of hope and doubt, of promise and failure, further the artist’s aim throughout his practice to “infuse within the darker side of the human experience humour and sarcasm in order to deflate and then balance out our unrealistic expectations, hopes and dreams.” While “Refusalon” certainly probes the deflating effects of refusal and rejection, Gillmore proves even the most negative messages can be conveyed with levity and aplomb. (2339 Granville St, Vancouver BC)
Graham Gillmore Rejection Letter 2009
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
