Elizabeth Milton: Summer Stock
Elizabeth Milton Auditions 2011 Project sketch Courtesy the artist
Vancouver artist Elizabeth Milton will kick off her own version of Inside the Actors Studio this week as she transforms Western Front’s Grand Luxe concert hall into an ersatz audition space. During the course of this May 9 to June 25 residency at Western Front, Milton and a team of amateur and professional actors (one of which is her mother) will play out scenarios inspired by a variety of phenomena: theatre protocols, job interviews, psychotherapy sessions, celebrity confessionals, reality television, prime-time talk shows and more. Related sets will be constructed too, and these, along with a resulting video, will go on public display at Access Gallery from June 25 to July 31.
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Elizabeth Milton Auditions 2011 Project sketch Courtesy the artist |
“I’ve always been interested in the constructs of theatre and theatricality drawn from pop culture in my work,” says Milton over the phone from Vancouver. Her recent video collaboration with Vancouver actor Tara Travis, The Actor Cries, shows Travis performing different flavours of crying—crying as a soap opera character, as a comedy character, and so on. And her video triptych St. Theresa’s Basement, created with fellow artist Sheila Poznikoff, features amateur actors preparing for their church group’s annual Christmas pageant.
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Elizabeth Milton Auditions 2011 Project sketch Courtesy the artist |
In this current project, titled Auditions, Milton hopes to further probe relationships between amateur and professional, expert and neophyte, private and public—tensions that are on increasing view given the popularity of programs like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance? and (even at its sunset) Oprah. On these programs, expert judges provide feedback to “regular” folks, while superstar journalists alternately amp the celebrity of unknowns and the everydayness of the ultrarich. As Milton notes, “these types of power dynamics are also reflected in art-world relationships between artist and curator, and between viewer and artist.” Perhaps the boob tube and the white cube aren’t as far apart we think. (303 E 8 Ave & 437 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC)
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