Art Metropole

Much of Fiona Banner’s work explores the problems and possibilities of written language. Her early work took the form of ‘wordscapes’ or ‘still films’ – blow-by-blow accounts written in her own words of feature films, (whose subjects range from war to porn) or sequences of events. These pieces took the form of solid single blocks of text, often the same shape and size as a cinema screen. Banner’s current work encompasses sculpture, drawing and installation but text is still at the heart of her practice. She recently turned her attention to the idea of the classic, art-historical nude, observing a life model and transcribing the pose and form in a similar vein to her earlier transcription of films. Often using parts of military aircraft as the support for these descriptions, Banner juxtaposes the brutal and the sensual, performing an almost complete cycle of intimacy and alienation.

Selected Exhibitions

2013 The Vanity Press, a solo exhibition at Summerhall, Edinburgh
2013 Glasstress 2013: White Light/White Heat a group exhibition at the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, Venice Biennale, Venice
2012 Unboxing, The Greatest Film Never Made a solo exhibition at 1301PE Gallery, L.A
2010 The Duveen Galleries Commission, a solo exhibition at Tate Britain
2010 The Naked Ear, a solo exhibition at Frith Street Gallery
2008 That Was Then… This Is Now, a group exhibition at MoMA, New York
2007 The Bastard Word, a solo exhibition at Power Plant, Toronto
2002 Turner Prize, short-listed
1998 Art Now Room, a solo exhibition at Tate Gallery, London

In a collaboration that has spanned well over a decade, Winnipeg multi-disciplinary artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have created a body of internationally acclaimed work that addresses feminist, lesbian, and social concerns with biting wit.

fun house mirrorDempsey and Millan’s controversial music video, We’re Talking Vulva, represented Canada at the 3rd Istanbul Biennial, and has screened to an estimated audience of a million people, world-wide. Their video, A Day in The Life of A Bull-Dyke, and the companion mock-Life magazine, In The Life, have received numerous awards, including the Manitoba Arts Council Prize for Innovation and Excellence, and second place at the 1996 United States Super 8 Film and Video Festival. Dempsey and Millan’s body of art video and film work has been the subject of many retrospectives, and includes titles such as Good-Citizen: Betty Baker (Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association Award “Best Short Drama”, 1999), What Does A Lesbian Look Like? (aired in rotation on Canada’s music video station Much Music, 1994-5), Homogeneity (created in residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation), Object/Subject of Desire (created at the Western Front and purchased by the Canada Council Art Bank) and the recent half-hour mock-u-mentary Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature.

Dempsey and Millan have created performance pieces that twist traditional mythology and iconography, explore notions of the lesbian body, and look at the devolution of modern-day language and democracy. These works include The Dress Series, costume-based work in which the traditional female costume is reconstructed out of unexpected materials. Other performances such as Co-op Collective’s Grocery Store, an installation and functioning food store, and the Lesbian Rangers tours-of-duty as part of the ongoing Lesbian National Parks and Services represent their site-specific work.

Other artistic activity has include residencies and special projects, such as a bi-lingual performance (English/Japanese) which toured Japan, and residencies at Headlands (California), Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York), Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia), and Western Front (Vancouver). Dempsey and Millan have created several public art installations and have self-published Handbook of The Junior Lesbian Ranger. In 2002 Pedlar Press published a long-awaited manual to bushcraft, the 270-page Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna and Survival Skills.

Recently, this duo has created new stage works, Unruly and Target Marketing, and a multi-channel video installation commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum entitled Archaeology and You. Their terrorist organization, Consideration Liberation Army, unleashed “The Summer of Thought” upon the city of Winnipeg in 2007 with video communiqués, audio bombs, actions, graffiti and manifestos. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 they also curated three significant group exhibitions for The Winnipeg Art Gallery: supernovas, In The Blink of An Eye, and Subconscious City.

Performance artifacts, films and videos by Dempsey and Millan are held in collections including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Regina Public Libraries, Planned Parenthood USA, American Indian Reservation Centre, and colleges and universities throughout North America.

In a collaboration that has spanned well over a decade, Winnipeg multi-disciplinary artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have created a body of internationally acclaimed work that addresses feminist, lesbian, and social concerns with biting wit.

fun house mirrorDempsey and Millan’s controversial music video, We’re Talking Vulva, represented Canada at the 3rd Istanbul Biennial, and has screened to an estimated audience of a million people, world-wide. Their video, A Day in The Life of A Bull-Dyke, and the companion mock-Life magazine, In The Life, have received numerous awards, including the Manitoba Arts Council Prize for Innovation and Excellence, and second place at the 1996 United States Super 8 Film and Video Festival. Dempsey and Millan’s body of art video and film work has been the subject of many retrospectives, and includes titles such as Good-Citizen: Betty Baker (Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association Award “Best Short Drama”, 1999), What Does A Lesbian Look Like? (aired in rotation on Canada’s music video station Much Music, 1994-5), Homogeneity (created in residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation), Object/Subject of Desire (created at the Western Front and purchased by the Canada Council Art Bank) and the recent half-hour mock-u-mentary Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature.

Dempsey and Millan have created performance pieces that twist traditional mythology and iconography, explore notions of the lesbian body, and look at the devolution of modern-day language and democracy. These works include The Dress Series, costume-based work in which the traditional female costume is reconstructed out of unexpected materials. Other performances such as Co-op Collective’s Grocery Store, an installation and functioning food store, and the Lesbian Rangers tours-of-duty as part of the ongoing Lesbian National Parks and Services represent their site-specific work.

Other artistic activity has include residencies and special projects, such as a bi-lingual performance (English/Japanese) which toured Japan, and residencies at Headlands (California), Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York), Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia), and Western Front (Vancouver). Dempsey and Millan have created several public art installations and have self-published Handbook of The Junior Lesbian Ranger. In 2002 Pedlar Press published a long-awaited manual to bushcraft, the 270-page Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna and Survival Skills.

Recently, this duo has created new stage works, Unruly and Target Marketing, and a multi-channel video installation commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum entitled Archaeology and You. Their terrorist organization, Consideration Liberation Army, unleashed “The Summer of Thought” upon the city of Winnipeg in 2007 with video communiqués, audio bombs, actions, graffiti and manifestos. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 they also curated three significant group exhibitions for The Winnipeg Art Gallery: supernovas, In The Blink of An Eye, and Subconscious City.

Performance artifacts, films and videos by Dempsey and Millan are held in collections including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Regina Public Libraries, Planned Parenthood USA, American Indian Reservation Centre, and colleges and universities throughout North America.

Rodney Graham (Canadian, b.1949) is well-known for his striking Conceptual Art. Graham was born in Matsqui, British Columbia, Canada, and he attended the University of British Columbia from 1968 to 1971. He also attended Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, from 1979 to 1980. While there, he was taught by Ian Wallace (Canadian, b.1943), a fellow Vancouver artist. Around the same time, Graham played with Jeff Wall (Canadian, b.1946) in the band UJ3RK5.

Graham draws his inspiration from different sources, including music, philosophy, and historical literature. Graham’s work defies classification; he mixes his work with technology from the past, including musical texts, optical devices, and even films. Some of his early works include Rome Ruins (1978) and Camera Obscura (1979). In the 1980s, Graham developed a series of works related to Sigmund Freud, including The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (1987). Graham made a series of videos and films in the 1990s in which he featured himself as the main character. Some of these videos include Halcion Sleep (1994), How I Became a Ramblin’ Man (1999), and The Phonokinetoscope (2002).

Graham started to paint and draw in 2003. He mixed photography and painting in many of his works. One example of his work from this period is The Gifted Amateur, November 10th, 1962 (2007). Graham has held a number of solo exhibitions in different places, including at Simon Fraser University in Burnady, Canada (1979), the Galerie Johnen & Schöttle in Cologne, Germany (1986), and Hauser & Wirth in Zurich, Switzerland (2011). He has also been involved in different group exhibitions at locations including the Galeria Sala Uno in Rome, Italy (1986), the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto, Canada (1991), and the Swiss Institute in New York, NY (2011).

For his work, Graham has received awards including the Gershon Iskowitz Prize from the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in Toronto, Canada (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis 2006 in Niedersächsiche Sparkassenstiftung, Germany (2006), and the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in Visual Arts in British Columbia (2011). Graham is represented by the Lisson Gallery in London, England, the Johnen Galerie in Berlin, Germany, and the 303 Gallery in New York, NY, among other galleries. Graham now lives and works in Vancouver.

Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1950. She received a BA from Ohio University in Athens (1972); an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (1977); and honorary doctorates from the University of Ohio (1993), the Rhode Island School of Design (2003), and New School University, New York (2005). Whether questioning consumerist impulses, describing torture, or lamenting death and disease, Jenny Holzer’s use of language provokes a response in the viewer. While her subversive work often blends in among advertisements in public space, its arresting content violates expectations. Holzer’s texts—such as the aphorisms “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “Protect me from what I want”—have appeared on posters and condoms, and as electronic LED signs and projections of xenon light. Holzer’s recent use of text ranges from silk-screened paintings of declassified government memoranda detailing prisoner abuse to poetry and prose in a sixty-five-foot-wide wall of light in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center, New York. She has received many awards, including the Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale (1990); the Skowhegan Medal (1994); and the Diploma of Chevalier (2000) from the French government. Major exhibitions include Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2001); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1997); Dia Art Foundation, New York (1989); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1989). Since 1996, Holzer has organized public light projections in cities worldwide. She was the first woman to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale (1990). Jenny Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.

Kristan Horton studied fine art at the University of Guelph and the Ontario College of Art and Design. For the past decade he has shown his work widely in Canada and abroad. He currently resides in Toronto. Horton’s multi-disciplinary practice includes sculpture, drawing, photography and video. Using layered processes of construction, both material and virtual; he has produced several long-term projects linked conceptually by their serial and episodic structure. Horton researches and creates his subjects in an intensive studio practice, ultimately realizing his artworks through inventive and experimental uses of digital technology. Horton’s acclaimed Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove project was seen in a series of over forty photographs exhibited at the Art Gallery of York University and accompanied by a publication illustrating all 200 diptychs (2007). He has also had solo exhibitions at White Columns, New York, (2008) and The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2007), among others. Horton’s work has been featured recently in the following group exhibitions: Beautiful Fictions, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2009-2010), My Evil Twin, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina (2009), Toy Void, Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich (2008), Stutter and Twitch, Bard College Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2007), Beyond/In Western New York, The Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2007) and We can Do This Now, The Power Plant, Toronto (2006-2007).

Joseph Kosuth was born in 1945 in Toledo, Ohio. He attended the Toledo Museum School of Design from 1955 to 1962 and studied privately under the Belgian painter Line Bloom Draper. In 1963, Kosuth enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He spent the following year in Paris and traveled throughout Europe and North Africa. He moved to New York in 1965 and attended the School of Visual Arts there until 1967. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, influenced the development of his art from 1965 to 1974. During this period, he explored the idea that language possesses meaning only in relationship to itself, as in the series One and Eight—A Description (1965), in which eight words in neon signify only the elements that compose the work; for example, Neon Electrical Light English Glass Letters Red Eight. Kosuth founded the Museum of Normal Art in New York in 1967 and his first solo show took place there that year.

In 1969, the artist organized an exhibition of his work, Fifteen Locations, which took place simultaneously at fifteen museums and galleries worldwide; he also participated in the seminal exhibition of Conceptual art, January 5–31, 1969, at the Seth Siegelaub Gallery, New York. Between 1970 to 1974, he presented a number of solo shows consisting of classroom environments in which participants were accommodated at desks, given documents to read, and presented with texts or diagrams on the walls. In 1973, the Kunstmuseum Luzern presented a major retrospective of his art that traveled in Europe.

Kosuth was coeditor of The Fox magazine in 1975–76 and art editor of Marxist Perspectives in 1977–78. In the series Text/Context (1978–79), the artist posted statements about art and language and their sociocultural contexts on billboards. In 1981, he began using the theories of Sigmund Freud in series such as Cathexis, which is composed of text and inverted photographs of Old Master paintings marked with colored Xs. Also in 1981, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Kunsthalle Bielefeld organized a major Kosuth retrospective. In his Zero and Not (1986), words were mechanically printed on paper and then partially obscured by tape. For A Grammatical Remark (1989–93), Kosuth applied white script on black walls; neon light was employed not only to grammatically punctuate the sentences, but also to visually punctuate the dark halls of the installation space. In 1993, the artist received the Menzione d’Onore at the Venice Biennale and was named Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2003, Kosuth created three installations in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, employing text, archival material, and objects from the museum’s collection to comment on the politics and philosophy behind museum collections. Kosuth’s distinguished teaching career has included professorships at the School of Visual Arts in New York (1967–85), Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg (1988–90), Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Stuttgart (1991–97), and Kunstakademie in Munich (2001–6); he is currently a professor at Instituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. Kosuth lives in New York and Rome.

(from the Guggenheim website)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Ono