Archives of Innocence
Photography with letterpress, 2007.
Westmount Park Relics
Archival pigment print
and letterpress on cotton paper, 13" x 17.5"
2007, Westmount and Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Archives of Innocence;
a collaboration with my daughters
February 22 until March 17, 2007
at the Victoria Hall Gallery in Westmount, Quebec, Canada
IN COLLABORATING with my two young daughters, Avigail and Zoe Iris, I produced work for “Archives of Innocence” as a reflex between my art practice and my role as a father. I highly value my family relationships as an essential motivation in my work.
AFTER COLLECTING natural objects from our local park, together with personal objects at home, my daughters and I created an intimate archive of treasures and shared sercrets. These things placed in small plastic zip bags began to speak of personal poetic narratives from under the plastic folds. Folds and transparency are a metaphor for me which function as eternally complex filters of what can be seen.
A TYPICAL painting exercise of cloth draped over objects is a perenial academic requirement in art study. The folds create an infinite amount of possibility. Try picking up a cloth and releasing it. It will fold and drape differently every time. The Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida was looking at the drapery on medieval artwork one day and having an epiphany said to himself, “If there were no folds in art, there would be no history of art.” Indeed, there is an intimate relationship between cloth and figurative art, and my work references that history.
SIX WORKS from this series have exhibited at the Olson Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota and the Dadian Gallery in Washington, D.C. as part of a three-year travelling exhibition called Art and Text: Images, Concepts and Insights, hosted by Civa.org. The curator Teresia Bush, formerly 25 years at Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum presented her curatorial statement at the show's first exhibition at the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion.
