Gary Spearin Explores iNiFiniTi and McMaster’s Vaults

Gary Spearin with his iNifiNiTi installation at McMaster Museum of Art

This summer, Gary Spearin steps into two roles in McMaster Museum of Art exhibitions – artist and guest curator. As artist, he presents his installation iNifiNiTi in the Museum’s Panabaker Gallery. As curator, he has mined the MMA vaults, drawing on contemporary works from McMaster’s collection for the complementary installation, PAINTING BEYOND a body of views

Both exhibitions run May 12 – August 18, 2012 with a Public Reception on Friday June 1, 6-8 pm, when the artist/curator will be present. Don’t miss it!
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Since 2007 Gary Spearin has been producing a series of paintings that are displayed as an installation titled iNifiNiTi, which he has conceived as an optical device to explore and to visualize the resonant dynamics of time and our experience and perception of it.

While the presentation in any given gallery installation is variable, determined by factors such as available wall space, they are always installed in a uniform grid, and in an order decided by the artist only during the hanging. The grid serves as a formal grounding structure contrasting with the spontaneous order of placement. Within it there are infinite possibilities for reading the works individually or the installation as a whole.

The individual titles are derived from dates (month/day/year) of sometimes personal significance but mostly of random selection, and always unrelated to the date of their making. The surfaces of the paintings are so visually rich and intricately detailed that any one of them invites endless, obsessive viewing, as does the whole of the installation. Each work possesses a unique character, yet the identity of individual works can easily be obscured by the overwhelming nature of the group. The whole is the sum of its parts and each of the parts is a self-contained whole. Spearin is painting pictures of ephemeral, infinite dimensions that exist beyond those which we can perceive or know.

- Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue essay “Picture Infinity”; David Liss, Artistic Director and Curator, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto.

iNifiNiTi,  the exhibition and accompanying catalogue, is a collaboration between Museum London and the McMaster Museum of Art.

As a complementary installation, PAINTING BEYOND a body of views, Gary Spearin has selected works from the McMaster Museum of Art collection by Art & Language, Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton, Alfredo Jaar, Leon Kossoff and Gerhard Richter to disrupt categorization in a purposeful way and thereby explore “the enigma of things.”

Gary Spearin was born in Hamilton; he studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and the University of Guelph. This is Spearin’s first Hamilton public gallery exhibition since 1995. He currently lives at Lake Huron between Kettle Point and Blue Point and teaches at Fanshawe College in London.

WISE UP: 2012 Graduating Art Student Exhibition

Don’t miss this year’s SUMMA exhibition!

The McMaster Museum of Art proudly presents Wise Up, the annual McMaster School of the Arts SUMMA exhibition, featuring art by this year’s graduating Studio Art students. It is on view April 12 – 28, 2012.

ARTISTS’ TALK: Wednesday April 18 at 12:30 pm

PUBLIC RECEPTION & AWARDS: Saturday April 21, 2 – 4 pm

This year’s class of 27 artists work in a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, print, drawing and non-traditional media such as fibre arts and video installations. Among many themes evident in their work, identity and nature are most prominent.

The Artists:
Giovanni Aiello, Emily Andrus, Jessica Bigda, Cameron Billyard, Gord Bond, Bonnie Bonus, Teal Booth, Josh Carey, Joanna Chan, Amanda Dudnik, Maggie Fair, Haleigh Fox, Annie Fraser, Fiona Freemark, Leslie Furness, Emily Hochheimer, Em Johnson, Morgan Kamocki Allaby, Isabel Knez, Katherine Koren, Mary MacLeod, Tenya Mastoras, Carole McLaren, Lisa Perlman, Gloria Pizio, Sofia Stanidis, Josh Starkey

Visit early and cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award.

The students have produced a beautiful exhibition catalogue for their show. Be sure to pick up a copy!

The installation has just begun (see below) – I can hear the hammers pounding furiously. Exhibition views coming soon!

Wise Up Exhibition installed - A view of the Sherman Gallery

Artist Barbara Astman Talks Shop

Barbara Astman talking about 'Dancing with Che: Enter Through the Gift Shop'

Last week, visiting artist Barbara Astman spoke about her latest installation/intervention just inside the Museum’s front door. The work is titled Dancing With Che: Enter Through the Giftshop (and yes, the Banksy reference is deliberate).  Her lively talk and the discussion that followed touched on everything from souvenir shopping and Astman’s photo on the cover of the 1980 Loverboy album to General Idea and Marcel Duchamp’s Boite en Valise (both are represented in McMaster’s collection.)

Here are a few more photos from the evening:

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Barbara Astman’s Dancing with Che

Barbara Astman, Dancing with Che: Enter through the Gift Shop, 2011, detail of merchandise.

The Museum is proud to present Barbara Astman’s exhibition/installation Dancing with Che: Enter through the Gift Shop,  which opens with a talk by the artist this Thursday February 16 at 6 pm.

Here, Astman explores the vulgarization and trivialization of iconic revolutionary Che Guevara and examines our consumer attitudes. All visitors to the Museum will enter by walking through the exhibition, a well stocked gift shop of Che souvenirs where nothing is for sale.

Astman created her original Dancing with Che series in 2003, after a trip to Cuba where she was struck by “Che chic,” the proliferation of imagery of the face of revolutionary Che Guevara on a range of souvenirs.

“I kept thinking about Che as a Pop culture icon,” said Astman, “and got beyond his being the revolutionary leader because when you see him on people’s chests and on coffee mugs, it’s almost like seeing Mick Jagger…becoming more of a consumer product.”

Her own photographs were created by shooting images of herself dancing to Latin music while wearing a Che T-shirt. These black-and-white images were then plastered onto mugs, tote bags, key-chains, playing cards and the like—merchandise for display, but not for purchase.

Barbara Astman’s exhibition at McMaster runs February 16 – May 5, 2012.

Barbara Astman’s career has spanned more than 35 years of photo-based media, sculpture-objects and public art commissions. Beginning with her earliest photo-self portraiture and narratives, Astman’s work is contemporaneous with and rightfully belongs with a formative generation of foundational feminist art practices in Canada and internationally. She has exhibited in more than 45 solo exhibitions since 1973, as well as in group exhibitions. A twenty-year survey of her work was organized and toured by the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 1995-1996. Her work is represented in major public collections in Canada and internationally. She is represented by the Corkin Gallery, Toronto.

Unpacking Perceptions

It’s another busy installation week at the Museum in preparation for Thursday’s opening of Perceptions of Promise: Biotechnology, Society and Art. All hands are on deck and a team of visiting artists are hard at work installing this extraordinary exhibition.

Here’s a peek behind the scenes…

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Margaret Priest’s Changing View

Tobi Bruce views Margaret Priest's work in the By Design and By Chance exhibition, McMaster Museum of Art

The Viewer reviews the View from Here of the View of the City

…we couldn’t resist.

Here’s an interesting study in the evolution of a work of art. It began
in 1995, when Canadian artist Margaret Priest created A View of the
City. The sculpture/installation consisted of three monumental parts
made of MDF board, coated with catalyzed lacquer. Evocative of the
modernist, urban environment, the work is the culmination of Priest’s
architectural-sculptural work in the mid-1990s, after the completion of
her public art commission The Monument to Construction Workers for Cloud
Park, at Bay and Adelaide in Toronto, in 1993.

A View of the City was included in a 1996 retrospective of Priest’s
work at the Art Gallery of Hamilton where it was photographically
documented by artist Michael Awad. In the catalogue image, AGH Curator, Tobi
Bruce is posed in front of the work, viewing and providing scale.

The artist gifted her sculpture to the McMaster Museum of Art in 1998.

In 2011 Priest revisited this work as a digital print, blowing up the
1996 photograph and mounting it on aluminum composite. The “model
viewer” is now part of the work and the title has grown with the work.

Margaret Priest The View From Here of the View of the City,1995-2011, digital print on Dibond, Courtesy of the artist. photo: Michael Awad

Walking Tour of Campus Sculpture

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (French 1891-1915) Bird Bath, 1992 - commissioned 1914, bronze. Levy Bequest Purchase. Collection of McMaster Museum of Art,
McMaster University. photo: Gabriela Palomo

Where has the Chimeric Figure flown?
What’s the story on that white figure in the trees by Forsyth Avenue?
Who created the Bird Bath in front of the Museum?

George B. Wallace
(Canadian 1920-2009)
Man Releasing Eagles
1973, Corten steel.
photo: G. Palomo

This summer, Gabriela Palomo, a 3rd year Studio Art student at McMaster University, is creating a guide to campus sculpture that will answer all your questions as well as provide some intriguing facts and features to look for. She is undertaking this research project for the McMaster Museum of Art, where she is a summer work/study student.

Included in the Museum’s collection of 7,000 objects are more than 20 large-scale sculptures, installed in various locations across campus. Some were commissioned to honour the contributions of founders, faculty and benefactors or to enhance specific locations. Others were generously gifted to the University. Over the years, many have moved to accommodate expansion on campus as well as to find more appropriate or protected sites. One was even buried six feet underground as part of an artistic performance – you’ll never guess where.

Until the guide is completed, visitors to campus may download this MAP TO CAMPUS SCULPTURE. Enjoy art on McMaster’s campus – it’s all around you!

Making “T”

Andreas Gehr (Swiss, born 1942), “T”, 1986, glass, fibreglass, 230 x 103 x 230 cm, Gift of Leo Meyer, 2009. Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University

There is no margin of error when it comes to the installation of Andreas Gehr’s“T”. Absolutely none. The 1986 work is made almost entirely of glass―29 pieces to be cleaned, assembled, balanced and adhered to one another other, in perfect alignment, without leaving a fingerprint. Not for the faint of heart.

Although I wear gloves to handle most works of art, in this case, with this material―thin, light and potentially slippery glass―it is safest to work bare handed. It just means that the final step is to clean the glass again.

Here are some shots of the installation in progress and the spectacular result. It’s on view in the current exhibition By Design and By Chance.

- Jennifer Petteplace, Installation/Preservation Officer, McMaster Museum of Art

An Installation Not Set in Stone

It’s installation week here at the Museum and given the scale and complexity of the works in the next exhibition By Design and By Chance, I thought I’d share some of the behind-the-scenes process. 

English artist Richard Long’s sculpture Spring Showers Line 1992 was last on view at the Museum in 1998, but it is never the same twice.  It’s a work that gives the installer a certain amount of artistic license. While the outside dimensions are fixed at 414 x 70 cm, the placement of the 103 pieces of Delabole slate within that space is up to the installer.

I try to make it appear to flow organically, avoiding linear edges and gridlike placement as much as possible. It’s a little like building a giant puzzle with extremely heavy pieces. . . always hoping you don’t end up with one piece left over.  

Below are a few photos from the installation. (These photos are presented for education purposes and not intended to contravene any copyright.)

Next up, assembling 29 glass boxes and shifting a big ball of blue pigment without touching it…

- Jennifer Petteplace, Installation/Preservation Officer, McMaster Museum of Art

 

Graduating Student Exhibition Opens

ENCOUNTERS: SUMMA 2011, McMaster Museum of Art

The Annual Graduating Studio Art Student exhibition is opening its doors, ahead of schedule! Encounters, the SUMMA 2011 exhibition, is a stunning exhibition and is ready to roll starting tomorrow morning. Have a little preview in pictures below…

Be sure to visit the Museum and VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE. Three awards will be presented at the Public Reception: a People’s Choice Award, Faculty Award, and Museum Award. Ballots are in the galleries and the ballot box is at the Museum’s reception desk.

ARTISTS’ TALK: April 13, 12 – 1 pm
PUBLIC RECEPTION AND AWARDS: April 16, 2 – 4 pm

Artists are:
Amber Aasman, Chris Aucoin, Laura Bromwich, Amanda Coulthard, Shauna Cowden, Kareem Ferreira, Jeremy Forsyth, Dave Franciosa, Reg Gilmore, Jo Johnson, Leah Klein, Christina Lee, Amy McIntosh, Kyla Moffatt, Andrew O’Connor, Holly Ovans, Kearon Roy Taylor, Mandy Shek, Laura Simon, Laura Sorbara

ENCOUNTERS: SUMMA 2011, McMaster Museum of Art

ENCOUNTERS: SUMMA 2011, McMaster Museum of Art

ENCOUNTERS: SUMMA 2011, McMaster Museum of Art

The exhibition continues until April 30.

McMaster Museum of Art