Art Metropole

#16296

I WONDER: ART + CARE + DEMENTIA

Artist

Cathy Busby

Writers

Melissa Andrew and Mandy Ginson

Price

$25.00

Date

2025

Publisher

Art Metropole

Format

Artists' Books

ISBN

978-1-989010-28-0

Size

15.2 × 15.2 × 1 cm

Length

134 pp

Genre

Disability and Chronic I, Contemporary Art, Text-Based, Canadian, Site-specific

I WONDER: Art + Care + Dementia began with a wall painting that echoed the words “I wonder” in the Superstar Shadow font frequently used by Cathy Busby’s late spouse, Garry Neill Kennedy. This book circles around the idea of wonder in narrating each of their life stories, their life together, and how they went through Garry’s dementia decline—inside and outside the healthcare system, supported by friends, family, and their continued artmaking. This story outlines Garry’s Remembering Names, a list-making work that he began in the early 1970s, and that he returned to during his dementia years; his vigorous 18 Drawings; and his Arrangements, that were photographed by Cathy, documenting the organization of his belongings in his last years. These works are followed by Quarantine Countdown, Cathy’s daily ritual of painting 1/14th of Garry’s room in longterm care during a 14-day COVID quarantine period; Cathy’s I WONDER, a wall painting started in the bathroom at Parkview care facility in Vancouver, and later completed as a memorial wall painting at Art Metropole in Toronto. To complement these works, Dr. Melissa Andrew gives a family friend and geriatrician’s analysis of Garry and Cathy’s process of ‘creative dementia care,’ while curator Mandy Ginson brings her perspective on both Garry’s and Cathy’s other artworks into the conversation. The stories and artworks are divided using red iron oxide pages and sub-divided using yellow oxide pages, both important colours in Garry’s early work.

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Cathy Busby has a longtime personal and political interest in pain and care. From her splayed SUV in the middle of the gallery floor, to her humorous yet poignant collections of self-help books, her energetic, multi-modal work addresses timely and critical issues. She attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1984), where she directed the College’s Anna Leonowens Gallery. Busby holds an MA in Media Studies and a PhD in Communication from Concordia University (1999). She was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University, and a Contemporary Art Researcher at the National Gallery of Canada (1997-98). She has exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally in New York, Beijing, Berlin, and Melbourne. She lives in Vancouver.

Garry Neill Kennedy was born in St. Catharines, Ontario in 1935 and died in Vancouver in 2021. His conceptual and critical artwork often filled rooms with colourful floor-to-ceiling wall-text paintings including, Quid Pro Quo and Failure of Intelligence. He received his MFA from Ohio University (1965) and exhibited extensively nationally and internationally including a retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada (2000) and an exhibition at Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (1998). Kennedy was the President of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design from 1967 to 1990, playing a pivotal role in the school’s transformation into an internationally recognized art institution. He received the Order of Canada (2003) and Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2004).